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Show Wetzlar Epidemic, 20 l/ll'etzlar Epidemic. there occurred stupor, or lancrnating pain, , deafness, or other signs of suffering in the brain leeches applied to the neck performed wonders. Frequently did I apply them three or four times." ld " I never gave emetics, lest the blood shou be driven to the head, and make the brain be- come again inflamed-which so easily happens here; nay, I remarked that those to whom eme- ties were given, died of inflammation of the brain." " A diarrhoea was always an agreeable occurrence. It broke the force of the disorder, or cut it short, even when it seemed to continue too long: I left it free range. ‘hlJUH "11.101 To stop it was to destroy the patient.---------- When the primas Vl33 were not evacuated, putrid fevers of the worst kind succeeded, beginning with apthm through the whole oesophagus, and in« testinal canal, and often passing to the lungs. Among thousands in whom the disorder was permitted to proceed to this crisis, there scarce escaped one. The disease, therefore, became putrid through neglect." The author adds that he did not lose above six patients, of whom two were very old peo ple. It is to be lamented that he does not give the exact number he attended. But from his tion in another passage that "he saw a great multitude of sick," we must conclude it to be nearly, if not altogether, the most successfully treated epidemic ofits kind upon record. Naturally, and otherwise treated, it was very fatal" The first of these two narratives is given in the Journal of Vandermonde for 1758 (p. 275.) ; the second in that of Hufeland for 1795, (iv. p. 416)-at their respective periods, the medical publications of widest circulation, I presume, in Europe. The first author did not extend his ideas beyond the epidemic before him; he does not, we see, even attempt a rationale ofthe later stages of the disorder, as depending on the first. The second, though he points out the way in which the secondary affections arise out of the original inflammation of the brain, extends his principle no further than to say, " that unques" tionably, aputrid fever, as it was called, prevav "lent atVVetzlar in l770,and the years following, "was this same fatal complaint; at which time," he adds, "it is too certain, that many a patient "paid with his life for the error of his physi- " cian." When once in such a train, the theory could not fail to be generalized. The wonder is, that its influence on books of general practice and nosology, should have been so tardy. Several having always had from 10 to 30 under treate years ago, I had learned by oral information, ment for several months, and from his assertion that |