grees of ma

peftilential

fevers, to

Various de- Suppose a spirited healthy man, in the lignity in bloom of life, fober, regular, and living on a clean light diet, fhould be infected with. what owing the true plague in the month of April: to constitute the disease, he must undergo, first, A degree of rigor for fome fhort time: fecondly, An increase of heat, pulse, thirst, and anxiety for four days: thirdly, A pain and fwelling in one or both groins, called a Bubo: fourthly, After which the fever would probably fubfide; he would find his health returning, with an inclination to get out of bed, and fome defire for food: fifthly, After fitting up for fome hours, he would return contented to bed; fall afleep; and break out into a kindly, warm, moderate, univerfal perspiration for fome hours; wake refreshed, and have one or two poultaceous ftools: fixthly, In getting up after the sweat, he would perceive the buboes less painful, lefs inflamed, and rather diminished in fize; and, by a repetition of fuch nights, he would foon recover his usual health, without any fuppuration of the buboes: fo that he would have gone through the whole course of the plague, without one symptom of malignity more than is effential to that disease. This was the cafe of the fervant of Doctor Adam Chenot; page 30. "Famulo ufus fum, qui ter peftem habuit. Primo fub finem Julii, cum fe

"bre

"bre miti & bubonis germine, qui poft ali"quot dies retroceffit," &c.

But fuppofe the fame contagion was to feize a perfon juft recovered out of a long mercurial falivation, or any body exhausted and reduced by age or infirmity; the dejection of fpirits might be fo great during the terrentia (i. e. before the formation of the real fever) as to induce them to destroy themselves; (as was fometimes the cafe in this city during the plague in 1665 and 1666) or they might perish in the rigor, or first stage of the fever, and die fuddenly, or drop down in the streets: this is one fpecies of malignity.

Suppofe the fame contagion was to feize a grofs, foul habit, loaded with putrid impurities, during the dog-days; then one might expect great dejection of fpirits, lofs of ftrength, violent pain and cramp at the pit of the ftomach; vomiting, purging, and frequent alternate chillinefs and flushing for many hours: to which would fucceed an ill-conditioned, irregular, malignant fever for fome days; and inftead of the eruption of a falutary bubo, with abatement of fymptoms, there would probably follow an eruption of petechie, phlyctane, and vibices, the harbingers of death.

Now let us fuppofc a ftrong, plethoric, vigorous man, living conftantly on animal food,

Degree of

peftilential

ing to the

food, of a bilious temperament, and debauching in fermented liquors, seized with the plague in the month of September: he might probably bear the terrentia pretty well; then a violent rigor would come on, fucceeded by great heat, thirst, pain in the head and back, foul mouth, rank breath, fickness at ftomach, griping in the bowels, and bilious dejections; after some days, the morbid matter would be driven to the furface of the body with great violence, and to thofe glands, in the groins or round the jaws, which experience fhews to be the common outlet of the miafmata of this particular fever; but probably the fever would not subside so kindly as in the first case; buboes and parotids indeed might form, and carbuncles appear in different places; but they would not easily come to a kindly fuppuration; on the contrary one might expect foul, ill-conditioned ulcers; a tedious fever, and a bad recovery; or a fatal retroceffion of them.

Here then are different fpecies of mamalignity in lignity in the fame contagious fever: I do fevers, ow- not mean to infer from all this that every circumftan- contagion is equally bénign; far from it, fome feminia are in their own nature more deleterious than others; e. g. the smallpox is more dangerous than either the fwine pox or chicken pox, just as some poifons

ces of the party in fected.

poifons are ftronger than others: all I contend for is, that, comparing for example the plague (the most deleterious of all the feminia we know of) with itself, the malignity, fo frequently met with in it, arifes more from the natural habit, and other circumstances of the party affected, than from the specific nature of the contagion: and that, to conquer the irregularity of the symptoms or malignity, great attention fhould be paid to the feafon of the year, the other fevers, or conftitutions of fevers, epidemic at the fame time'; as well as to the habit and other circumftances of the fick perfon: fo that if, in the space of eight months, fixteen people are feized with the fame plague, each of them may require a different treatment, and fome of them no drug of any kind: unlefs we knew fome remedy, which, by its fpecific* quality, could deftroy the deleterious nature of the poison, without hurting the conftitution; as fulphur does the itch.

By specific I mean what deftroys the virulence of the poifon without expelling it, in contra-distinction to alexipharmic, which is fuppofed to expel the poifon, whether altered or not, out of the body; and therefore may be applied to every medicine that evacuates morbid matter, although it has of late been confined to the class of fudorific medicines only; because they had been found ferviceable in expelling the miafmata of fome peftilential fevers,

It

The doc

trine of fpe

fard.

It is evident that the art of chemistry cifics in fe- can never discover such a remedy, becaufe vers is ab- the feminium is too fubtile to admit of any analysis; and until the nature of the conflituent parts are discovered, how can one pretend to a counter-poifon, when the poifon itself is not understood *? And yet the contagious fevers are the only ones for which a specific can exift: but the man who can pretend to a specific for what I call the common fevers, muft certainly not understand one of them; or be the most impudent impoftor on earth. Why then are some specifics fo cried up? The reafon is plain :

Moft fevers are those which I call the common fevers, the natural confequence of the change of season, diet, &c.; for the moft part they are not dangerous; and although fome few cannot be conquered even by art, yet many of them will go off without much medical affistance; and fome people affected with them will escape with their lives, in fpite of bad practice; al

* Hence it appears to me, that preparing people for receiving the small pox requires fome fkill in medicine; and that frequent, ftrong, mercurial purgatives may be prejudicial in fome cafes and habits. The few fpecifics we know of have been discovered by accident; and repeated, perhaps unfuccefsful, trials have afcertained the nature and dofe of a medicine.

though,