TREATMENT OF ACUTE DISEASES'. :>79 



peripneUmony ; on the contrary, such doses have proved 

 highly beneficial. 



When the disorder has resisted these menus, I nave or- 

 dered, with great success, calomel, in large and frequent 



doses, as long as the violent symptoms continued. 



Pleurisies and peripneumonies are often epidemic amongst 

 the Negroes in Jamaica, and attended with a remitting fever. 

 Full vomiting is here particularly useful ; in the exacerba- 

 tions twenty-five or thirty drops of laudanum take off the 

 spasm, and the bark secures the patient from a return of the 

 complaint. 



I might have mentioned splenitis, and other internal in- 

 flammations, but as they give way to similar management, I 

 proceed to treat of the dysentery. 



The dysentery has in every war carried off more of our 

 troops in the West Indies, than all the other diseases of that 

 climate. It is a melancholy truth, that this fatality is greatly 

 owing to the folly and intemperance of soldiers and sailors, 

 and not to the climate, which has been blamed for it. 

 Drinking to excess of new and bad rum destroys the powers 

 of the stomach, and debilitates their strength ; they are either 

 attacked by some violent inflammatory disorder, or are liable 

 to receive infection from human bodies, or from marsh mias- 

 mata. 



Europeans labouring under dysentery, in the West Indies, 

 have more or less of remitting fever : in such patients bleed- 

 ing, if at all necessary, ought to be had recourse to very spa- 

 ringly. Negroes ill of dysentery, or other acute diseases, ad- 

 mit of a more free use of the lancet. In ordinary cases, an 

 emetic of ipecacuanha, afterwards a dose of rhubarb and ca- 

 lomel, and an opiate at bed-time, generally carry off the dis- 

 order. 



In epidemic dysenteries, attended with great prostration 

 of strength, and other symptoms of putrescency, I am solid- 



