| Citation |
BG.761.052
24 Aug 1761:31 (334)
We hear from Newport, that on Tuesday the 18th instant the
Princess Rhoda, eldest daughter to the late Princess
Carolina was sized with a fit of madness, which is likely to
prove fatal.
This lady has from her birth been greatly oppressed with
wind and vapours, which has occasioned a constant gloom and
melancholly on her spirits, and rendered her manners sour
and unsocial.----Her grandmother who by a thousand
expedients has never yet been able to cure either her
children or grand-children of a delirium almost
constitutional; sent them lately a company of doctor, who
had been famous in the family, and had performed great
cures. Virginia, aunt to Rhoda, and always distinguished in
the family for her good sense and filial piety, strongly
recommended to the skill of the doctors; but the poor
defracted Rhoda having had no liberal education, and being
entirely under the dominion of ignorant quack, would not
suffer them to administer to her; so violently did she dread
the intended prescriptions, that she was convulsed merely at
the sound of them, without having the least idea of their
nature or tendency; The doctors, not enough considering the
lady's weakness, began their preparations in her presence,
but alas! The compositions were too aethereal; the
medicines which were with infinite pains collected by the
muses, in the bowels of Parnassus, and infused with the
waters of Helicon, proved so subtle that the lady's brain
was, as it were, thrown into a ferment, and she had near
expired in the frenzy.
It must be confessed, however, that the doctors were too
refined in their method of cure, for 'tis supposed that
strong distilled spirits, the melody of a jews harp, or some
nostrums, usually administred in the fields, or at an
evening lecture, through the nose of a fanatic hypocritical
saint, would have better agreed with the lady's
constitution, and perhaps, by soothing her stupidity, might
have respited for a while her present wretched condition.
|