" He then stepped towards his patient, and put some
questions, to which the poor invalid, though he seemed to
recognize the friendly and familiar voice, answered only in a
faltering and uncertain manner.
The young lady, in her turn, had drawn back when the doctor
approached his patient. "You see how it is with him," said the
doctor, addressing me. "I have heard our poor friend, in one of
the most eloquent of his pleadings, give a description of this
very disease, which he compared to the tortures inflicted by
Mezentius when he chained the dead to the living. The soul, he
said, is imprisoned in its dungeon of flesh, and though retaining
its natural and unalienable properties, can no more exert them
than the captive enclosed within a prison-house can act as a free
agent. Alas! to see HIM, who could so well describe what this
malady was in others, a prey himself to its infirmities! I shall
never forget the solemn tone of expression with which he summed
up the incapacities of the paralytic--the deafened ear, the
dimmed eye, the crippled limbs--in the noble words of Juvenal,--
"'Omni
Membrorum damno major, dementia, quae nec
Nomina servorum, nec vultum agnoscit amici.
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