a violent passion of the mind, consisting in a propensity to take vengeance on the author of some real or supposed injury done the offended party. See Moral Philosophy, n° 31, 212.; and the article Emotions and Passions, n° vi. and xi. 9, 10.

Physicians and naturalists afford instances of very extraordinary effects of this passion. Borrichius cured a woman of an inveterate tertian ague, which had baffled the art of physic, by putting the patient in a furious fit of anger. Valeriola made use of the same means, with the like success, in a quartan ague. The same passion has been equally fatal to paralytic, gouty, and even dumb persons; to which last it has sometimes given the use of speech. Ettmuller gives divers instances of very singular cures wrought by anger; among others, he mentions a person laid up in the gout, who, being provoked by his physician, flew upon him, and was cured. It is true, the remedy is somewhat dangerous in the application, when a patient does not know how to use it with moderation. We meet with several instances of princes to whom it has proved mortal; e.g., Valentian, the first, Wenceslas, Matthias Corvinus king of Hungary, and others. There are also instances where it has produced the epilepsy, jaundice, cholera-morbis, diarrhoea, &c. Mem. de Trev. 1707. p. 923.