TREATMENT OF ACUTE DISEASES. 3?1 



the patients are brought into spacious and well-aired chambers, 

 and are lightly covered with bed-clothes. 



In the first stage of typhus, brisk small beer may be given 

 plentifully for common drink, or water slightly impregnated 

 with vitriolic acid. The strength of the patients should be 

 supported by giving them frequently panada, or gruel, with 

 wine. Attention, too, must be paid to the state of the belly, 

 and of the other emunctories. 



Some late authors, who have written on West India dis- 

 eases, have roundly asserted, that in tropical countries fevers 

 are not contagious ; but whoever has had the care of crowded 

 hospitals, of jails, of ships of war, or of transports full of 

 troops, must have seen numerous and fatal instances of con- 

 tagion in the West Indies ; more especially where cleanliness 

 and free ventilation have been neglected. 



From causes of this sort a most fatal and destructive dis- 

 order broke out in the West Indies in 1793, and soon after 

 in Philadelphia, viz. the yellow fever. Dr Hush has classed 

 this disorder with remittents ; but every one who has practised 

 in the West Indies, knows for certain, that the remittent fe- 

 vers of warm countries are not contagious. From Dr Hush's 

 book, and from the numerous letters of my correspondents, 

 there remains not a doubt, in my mind, of the yellow fever 

 being typhus, exalted to a great degree of virulence from cli- 

 mate, situation, and other adventitious circumstances. 



The yellow fever has appeared in America at different pe- 

 riods, as we learn from Dr Lining's paper in the Edinburgh 

 Essays, Physical and Literary, vol. ii. ; and it was this same 

 disorder that committed such havock amongst the troops un- 

 der Admiral Vernon, in 1741. 



The commencement of this fever, in Grenada, is dated 

 from May 1793, soon after the arrival of a Guinea ship from 

 Sierra Leone, the crew of which had been so sickly, that most 

 of the sailors died of the yellow fever, either in the voyage, 

 or soon after the arrival of the ship. It suddenly spread over 



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