538 On Medical Entomology. 



stead : tliey arc even the surest touchstone for distinguish- 

 ing and measuring the vitality of our organs. 



The yellow fever of America exhibits numerous relations 

 with the jail and hospital fever, which is itself a complica- 

 tion of adynamic \Aith ataxic fever*. In both, many pa- 

 tients have been indebted for their lives to vesicatories ap- 

 plied to tlie head, breast, abdomen, and limbs. 



'I'hc eruption of the parotids in adynamic and ataxic fe- 

 vers has been conunonly considered as a metastasis, which 

 must be favoured. Bang and Pinel think, on the other 

 hand, that these tumors are almost always fatal, as they 

 determine a sort of congestion towards the head. They 

 endeavoured, therefore, to prevent or to dissipate them. 

 Though the Danish physician employed several internal 

 and external remedies, it may be easily perceived that vesi- 

 catories contributed, in a powerful manner, to the success 

 be obtained. 



The pernicious interuiitlent and remittent fevers, so well 

 described by Torti and Alibert, have been classed among 

 the ataxic by Pinel, who sees in their' periodicity nothing- 

 hut a generic character. Among the numerous varieties of 

 these fevers the comatose is the only one which 1 have ob- 

 served several times. The application of vesicatories at the 

 moment of attack, lessened considerably the soporific state 

 of three patients, and disposed them to take cinchona, to 

 which they were indebted for their cure. The fourth was 

 •iess fortunate : the coma, which produced a sudden exa- 

 cerbation of a simple tertian l^ver, of which he had been 

 ill ten days, approached near to a catalepsy, since the limbs 

 preserved very exactly the situation which I gave to them. 

 I applied large vesicatories to the thighs, and sinapisms to 

 the soles of the feel. Neither of them made scarcely any 

 impression; which destroyed all hope of my being able to 

 ad 1 sinister cinchona, and consequently to save the patient. 

 There was not, indeed, the slightest remission : the sym- 

 ptoms, instead of being mitigated, became more and more 

 alarming, and in twenty-seven hours after the attack ter- 

 minated in death. The lateral ventricles of the brain were 

 distended by a great quantity of coagulated lymph. 



The plague amiuunces itself, like ataxic fever, by a pro- 

 found lesion of sensibility : it would not even be distin- 

 guished from it, did not filthy exanthemata and frightful 

 contiigioi^ impose on it a special type. It is, however, cer- 



• An Outline of the History and Cuie of the Fever, &c. by R. Jack- 

 ion, Edin. 179S. 



tain. 



