346 Facts relative to Cijnanche Trachealis. 



proved that assurance to have been visionary. It is 

 needless to recite the range of remedies employed on 

 that occasion without a single instance of success. As 

 emetics and purgatives, antimony, mercury, ipecacu- 

 anha, and squills, in their turn yielded to and sup- 

 planted each other. Blood-letting, to the usual extent, 

 blisters, and seneca-root, in various shapes and quanti- 

 ties, all had ample opportunities of acquiring honest re- 

 putation. Having lost every patient that came under 

 my own notice, and knowing my brethren to have been 

 equally unfortunate, I had determined, with the concur- 

 rence of the community, to attempt the prevention of 

 death in future, by an early trial of the operation of tra- 

 cheotomy. The novelty of this project, however, and 

 the popular notion of its barbarity, I soon discovered to 

 be insurmountable impediments to its execution, and I 

 had soon to witness again the futility of all my efforts, 

 in the case of a fine young girl of nine or ten years of 

 age, and the daughter of one of my most particular 

 friends. 



As I had determined upon a minute examination of 

 the diseased part in this case, after the death of the 

 child, which I soon discovered to be inevitable, I had 

 prepared myself with every necessary implement, to 

 sicze the moment of its dissolution, to make an opening 

 into the traehea, dislodge the membrane, if any should 

 be found, and to proceed, without delay, in the usual 

 means of restoring suspended animation ; and so solici- 

 tous was I to lose not a moment after respiration had 

 sed, that, while in the aet of making the first inci- 

 ., the child made an eil'ort to inspire for the la^t 



