in relation to Disease. 38 



effects of cold as an antiphlogistic means ; either through the 

 atmosphere, or by immediate application to parts affected. 

 The employment of cold water externally, as a dressing to 

 fractured limbs, gives one proof among many of the benefits 

 of the latter practice ; and we have reason to infer, that the 

 liquid form is the best in which such application may be made 

 for the relief of inflammation in open wounds, or other inflamed 

 surfaces. Here also prejudices are to be overcome ; the best 

 assistance towards which is often derived from the sensations 

 of the patient himself. 



While thus briefly referring to some of the effects of tem- 

 perature, and chiefly on points of practical import, it must be 

 repeated, that we can rarely view them separately from the 

 other conditions before noticed. Every change as to heat or 

 cold in the atmosphere must either be the effect of, or produce, 

 other changes of atmospheric state ; and none of these, it may 

 be affirmed, are wholly indifferent to the body. Even in the 

 simple case just mentioned, of the influence of warm or cold 

 weather on open sores, though the atmosphere be admitted as 

 the source of change, the effects are probably not due to tem- 

 perature alone. Still less can it be supposed in regard to cer- 

 tain winds of our own climate ; such as those from the east and 

 south ; the relations of which to the body are in no wise inter- 

 preted by the thermometer. The same remark extends more 

 remarkably to the Sirocco of the South of Europe ; and gene- 

 rally, perhaps, to the dominant or more peculiar winds of every 

 locality over the globe. Where any one is especially noxious 

 in producing epidemics, or in its effects on the general health, 

 there, probably, is the direct influence of temperature on the 

 body least in proportion to the other causes concerned. 



Even in the endemic diseases of particular climates, the same 

 view may be entertained. We have no certain proof that the 

 fevers of the West Indies, or the Guinea coast — or the dysen- 

 tery, remittent fevers, and liver diseases of different parts of 

 India — or the malaria-fevers of Italy and Greece, are owing to 

 the heat merely of these several climates. Hepatic disorders, 

 indeed, generally, may be considered as having closest con- 

 nexion with this influence ; but in others of the above examples, 

 the best evidence we possess leads us to causes, in which tem- 



VOL. XXIX, NO. Lvn— auLY 1840. c 



