MEMOIR OF 1)K WEIGHT. —117 



Dr Cuhkie's first letter to Dr Wright, is dated 

 the 24th of February 1799- The following are ex- 

 tracts : 



" My Dear Sih, — I received your obliging letter of the 

 21st, this morning, and lose no time in assuring you of the 

 satisfaction it has given me. I am very happy to iind that 

 you are about to favour me with your observations on my 

 book, on which I will place their just value. The other com- 

 munications you express your intention of sending, I will re- 

 ceive with pleasure and thankfulness. I am much pleased to see 

 that you are going to entrust me with some of your own origi- 

 nal MSS. recovered from the Medical Society of London. I 

 consider every thing from you as of the very first authority. 

 I have some reason to believe, by a message from Cadkll 

 and Davies, that a new edition of my Reports will be re- 

 quired in a little while ; and, on this account, I am the more 

 anxious to receive your packet, with as little delay as conve- 

 nience will admit. 



"■ I have received from various quarters accounts of the 

 successful use of cold ablution in fever. Strange to say, in 

 the last dreadful fever in Philadelphia, though every other 

 method proved so utterly inefficacious, this was never once 

 tried ; but at Boston it was used with the happiest effects. 

 What murderous work they made of it at Philadelphia ! My 

 blood runs cold when I think of it. 



" 1 have never the slightest opposition to the affusion <>l 

 cold water here. It is universally received and admitted 

 among the better classes; and, indeed, among the poor, 

 where their miserable accommodations, of which you will see 

 some account in my book, admit of it. 



" I have had five eases of hydrophobia under my care in 

 the last five years, one very lately. I think I have a dis- 

 tinctcr conception of the nature of the disease than I Iind m 



