Ii8 on coughs and colds. '^'^S' *'• 



air is better fitted for attracting and suspending con- 

 tagious vapours, than when dried either by cxcefsive 

 heat or cold. A hot summer causes the plague to 

 cease at Constantinople, as readily as a cold winter, 

 and indeed more so ; because furs and woollen clothes, 

 the great retainers of contagion, are more used ia 

 winter than summer. 



1 2th, Air being heavier, and more loaded with 

 vapours as it approaches nearer to the earth, may 

 be the reason why the influenza commonly seizes first 

 upon dogs and horses, and why it is considered as 

 more wholesome to live in an upper story, than on 

 the ground floor of a house. 



13th. The most succefsful prescription, and one 

 to which physicians are driven when colds are very 

 obstinate, is country air. May not its efficacy ia 

 curing the distemper proceed as much from its being 

 lefs impregnated with contagious vapours, as from 

 its being purer in other respects ? 



14th. Certain habits of body expose some indivi- 

 duals of a family to catch cold more readily than 

 others living in the same house, and breathing the 

 same air. May not this rather prove that the distem- 

 per is not very contagious, than that it is not con- 

 tagious in any degree ? 



15th. It has been observed that damp bed linen> 

 in the country, is apt to occasion disorders in the 

 bowels ; but that in towns it is apter to produce 

 coughs: That, at sea, being wet occasions rheuma- 

 tisms sometimes, but never colds. Hence the ok- 

 servation that being wet with salt water is not so 

 dangerous as with frelk. 



