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Show Fluctuations (f opinions and practice in fever. of superiority over France in the widest department-in the whole-of medical practice. to our times the method of treating the yellow fever the least imperfect of all hitherto pursued. It was narrowness of information, or neglect of past observers, whose authority never ought to be deemed inferior to that of present specu- iatists, that heightened the terrible calamities, produced by this disease. In referring to testimonies expressly in point, and delivered in our own as well as other languages, one is astonished that the mere acident of Dr. Franklin having in his possession a medical manuscript, and putting it into the hands ofa lead» ing practioner at Philadelphia should have been among the earliest means of staying the great pestilence of the present age. If Euro: pean experience was unsatisfactory, there might have been easily found precedents for the treatnient of the worst fevers of America on the plan 166 It is, I am afraid, too true that we had a right. to reproach our rivals with their indiscrimate profusion of blood, but not quite so certain that our confidence in an opposite process was well.- founded. If we can yet rely upon what large and miserable experience seems to have evinced, we might venture to conjecture that a person ill of fever was fortunate or otherwise, according to the variety and stage of his complaint, as he fell into French or British hands. If early, if in a hot season or climate, if affected by strong inflammation, French practice was calculated to save, and British to de- Wirinow int stroy. But the Frenchman forgot that neither fever nor inflammation continues-qualis ah incepto processerit-to be what it is at first, and by mechanically going on, he lost his advantage of setting out right. Nevertheless, in fevers that really put the healing art to the test-in comparison with which much of the fever we see at home is but trifling indispositiou-an idea grew very current that the French were more successful. And if the opinion that at present most obtains be right, Deveze, 167 most generally adopted after various trials, car- ried on at a dreadful cost of lives. Such a precedent is to be found in a book so little rare as the Anne"! Physician's I egacy. Dover, the author, was huccaneer and physician, and he seems to have practiced both professions pretty much in the same Spirit. His simple narrative is as follows : a The plague, he says, begins as all other fevers cautious follower of the medical fashion of his do, with intermissions of heat and cold,- the symp country, had the honour of being first to tame the monster of the Delaware-of pointing out lhirst, violent vomiting, pains in the head, back,joints, and to allover the muscles; a total failure and prostration of all toms are higher strength and ability. that in any other fever,- intense The |