MEMOIR. XV 



normal, beating from 80 to 85 in the minute. One of the medical attend- 

 ants, however, thought fit, in the course of the day, to bleed the patient 

 largely: two pounds of healthy looking blood were drawn from the left 

 arm, A mustard foot-bath was used in the evening, and a large blister 

 applied to the back of the neck. The night was spent very restlessly; 

 and about three, a.m., the pulse seemed so hard and full that the attend- 

 ants were induced to repeat the bleeding, which they now did from the 

 right arm. After this the patient's muscular powders sunk rapidly, though 

 his nervous sensibility and intelligence were not at all impaired. On 

 F'riday morning he was ordered a little tartar emetic, which however did 

 not act upwards. His mouth was then observed to be filled with a copious 

 flow of mucous saliva; and this, together with the difficulty which he felt in 

 swallowing the emetic solution, induced the patient himself to remark that 

 he was hke a person labouring under hydrophobia. In the afternoon, M. Du- 

 puytren, in order to excite the action of the oesophagus and pharynx, threw 

 into the stomach four-and-twenty grains of ipecacuanha, but no vomiting 

 ensued. In three hours after double the quantity was employed, but 

 without the occurrence even of nausea. At seven in the evening, a strong 

 lavement of salt and water (saturated) was given : this produced a super- 

 purgation. Same night two or three large 'English vesicatories' were 

 applied along the course of the cervical plexuses, and the patient was in a 

 most restless condition. On Saturday morning it appeared that the left 

 leg was beginning to be paralyzed. At the patient's earnest request, 

 some bouillon was conveyed into his stomach : he was also removed from 

 his bed-chamber into his spacious saloon. The blisters did no good ; 

 they did not even irritate the skin. In the course of the day he had given 

 him some iced raspberry vinegar, and enjoyed comparative repose; but 

 the night brought on much severe suffering. All power of motion and 

 swallowing was now extinct. Twenty leeches were applied to the region 

 of the mastoid processes. ' When I saw him on Sunday morning,' says 

 Dr. Rousseau, ' it seemed as if he had grown on a sudden ten years older; 

 his voice also was wonderfully changed.' That day (Sunday, 13th — the 

 day of his death) the patient began to lose all hope. When any new mea- 

 sure was proposed to him he shook his head with a desponding assent. 

 He was cupped on the loins about noon ; and again, about eight in the 

 evening, he was persuaded to suffer himself to be cupped below the sca- 

 pulae. This operation fatigued him greatly. At a quarter to nine he 

 asked the hour, and complained that his faculties were leaving him; * and, 

 at a quarter to ten,' says Dr. R., * I observed three or four slight motions 

 of the head and a feeble expiration, which I found had deprived the world 

 of d man of vast knowledge and the most extraordinary genius. He died 

 in his arm-chair, sitting erect, with his head neither inclined one way nor 



