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Show Fluctuations of opinions and practice ill‘fcz‘er. Accounts from the continent of Europe will perhaps not be so well received as from the villages, about the middle of last century. This practitioner was deputed by the government to take measures for alleviating the calamity. lle appeals by name to another physician, to two 170 northern part of the continent of America, partly because we speak in a different tongue, but chiefly because our imaginations are respectively occupied by a different set of professional phantoms. In realities, we shall be found, taken in the mass and one thing set against another, much more nearly on a level than people on this side of the water, who have not looked closely into particulars, will easily believe. But, in all faculties, the hearts of men attract and repel each other chiefly in virtue of Wham min -- x..- i ideas purely imaginative, as if the vacuity of these required to be filled up by a common effort of feelirig-Nevertheless I shall risk another example ineorroboration of Dover fron‘. aFrench observer. For in our own temperate climate extreme cases will occur, even in civil practice among opulent families, at least sporadically, and who but musttremble for thepatient, when false or imperfect instruction has kept extreme means of cure out of the contemplation of his physician? In medicine, general rules are dreadfully apt to murder their exceptions; the general rules long current among us for the treat« ment of fever as apt as any other. Dr. Audouin de Chainebrun has left us the account of a phrenitic fever, prevalent in spring 173 surgeons, and various other persons as witnesses of the facts. He also names several of the sick. ---The attack was furious-a convulsive rigor. violent enough to shake the bed. was succeeded by a transport of delirium so strong, as to re- quire several persons to hold the patient. The fatal termination was speedy; sometimes (as we have seen in the late epidemic at Geneva) it took place within a very few hours. A dangliter of M. Bignon, the mayor of Beaumont, 2!, sanguine, strong, was bled 21 times; almost always to syncope. "The symptoms were not calmed and dissipated till after the last bleeding; scarce any fever on the QQnd day after seizure." A strong lad, 20, within five days bled 13 times to syncope-was able to go out on the 12th day-M. Petaut, 30, ofa bilious sanguine tem- perament, had been bound down on account of his fury. He was, he said, " burning in he!!!" His cries could be heard 100 paces from his apartment. After being bled eight times, he was regarded as past hope. It was now, says the author, that " the bishop of Beauvais and " Dr. Boyer desired me to visit him. I bled and summer at Beaumont sur ()ise and 29 other " him twice in both feet at the same time with- " out diminishing his frenzy. This led me to villages, " bleed |