“I find that principle and reflection afford a feeble support against the visitations of melancholy. It is a physical distemper, and must be counteracted by physical means. It is not the direct application of reason that will school it down, any more that it can cure the discomfort of your physical sensations when placed in an overheated room, for example. But it is our duty to apply whatever experience tells us is a corrective against those unpleasant feelings which agitate, and enfeeble, and render unfit for any useful exertion. It is not my duty to feel cool and comfortable when placed in a confined room; but it is my duty to rise and open the window if this can restore me to my wonted capacity of exertion. It is perhaps not my duty to summon up a cheerfulness of mind in the hour of unaccountable despondency, for perhaps this is an affair as completely beyond the control of reason as any other of our physical sensations; but it is my duty to study, and, if possible, to devise expedients for restoring me from this useless and melancholy state. Now, all experience assures me that regular occupation is that expedient; and it is my duty, if I find myself unequal to the severity of my usual exercises, to devise slighter subjects of employment which can be resorted to in the time of necessity. This I esteem to be an important part of moral discipline. Writing a fair copy of an old production which you wish to preserve, setting your books and papers into a state of greater arrangement, writing letters, looking over your accounts, and making slight but interesting calculations about your future gains and future expenditure,—these, and a number of other subjects of occupation, should occur to be ever ready to offer themselves as correctives to melancholy. Let me cultivate, then, that habit of exertion which will not shrink from a remedy which I find so effectual.”
-Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
West Port Experiment 
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