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Show 174 Fluctuations of opinions and practice infever. and to sovereigns depending, the one upon the of so acute an umpire as Mr. Gibbon, together prejudices of physicians, the other upon those with the difficulty of the subject would dis suade me from an attempt to arbitrate between two persons, so much my superiors, if [ did of historians-In fact fever will naturally always end more putrid, as it has begun more inflammatory, and frequently will be more nervous at the same time. Our milder variety of fever-typhus mitior-w is scarcely ever dangerous but from mischievous interference-Only keep the sick cool and they will recover- But a deep feeling of the difficulties, still surrounding the treatment of the more malignant forms, tempts me to hazard a few remarks on a. difl'erence of opinion, amounting, as nearly as possible,- to a COHtI‘Oe versy between the two most celebrated writers on fever of our time and country-I have not forgotten that, according to Mr. Hume, on " .,,33wgywzfim*t" amt». "m7 U " A 17.3 the storm of Jerusalem the first crusaders pursued the Saracens with great slaughter till they approached the holy sepulchre, at sight of which they immediately dropped their arms and burst into tears ;-that Voltaire not hope that the renewal of the question might at least forward its solution: forl do not flatter myself with the most distant hope of solving it wholly. Dr. Jackson, who from his expe- rience in so many climates may be styled the Ulysses of medicine, had pursued in certain varieties of fever, and those the most ma- lignant of all, that practice of profuse bloodletting, by which Galen extorted from the astonished spectators, the gratifying exclama- mation sa¢a§a;, afipmrs, "ray 7rvgs7w. 0/2 man, tlzou [last cut the throat of the fever!- and which, seasonany employed, has been attended with the same instantaneous success in the hands of the ablest physicians of every age. In an instance which he particularizes (flied. department of the army, p. 145), by at predecessors, will not believe that those who slaughtered and those who wept were the same once drawing 56 ounces of blood, be relieved the patient, as he himself expressed it, "from chains and horrors," so that by the addition ofa blister and emetic tartar with opium, the danger, ohse ved also by another physician, was past in four hours. "He had sometimes individuals; though the mutability of feeling used bloodletting, as a preliminary to warm in ehildrm and barbarians, vouches for the fidelity of the first narrative- The ill success and cold bathing. Of the " very important differences between Dr. Jackson and himself," Dr. wholly questions the sudden tenderness of the eaptorsk-and that Mr. Gibbon, having to choose between the opinions of his illustrious of |