INFLAMMATIONS. 41 



CCCXXI. If we judge rightly of the nature of this disease, 

 it will be obvious, that the cure of it requires the most power- 

 ful remedies of inflammation, to be employed upon the very 

 first appearance of the symptoms. When a suffocation is threat- 

 ened, whether any remedies can be employed to prevent it, we 

 have not had experience to determine. 



CCCXXII. The accounts which books have hitherto given 

 us of inflammations of the larynx, and the parts connect- 

 ed with it, amount to what we have now said ; and the instances 

 recorded have almost all of them happened in adult persons ; 

 but there is a peculiar affection of this kind happening, espe- 

 cially to infants, which till lately has been little taken notice of. 

 Dr. Home is the first who has given any distinct account of it ; 

 but, since he wrote, several other authors have taken notice of 

 it (see Michaelis De angina polyposa sive membranacea, Ar- 

 gentorati 177&) 5 anc ^ nave given different opinions with regard 

 to it. Concerning this diversity of opinions, I shall not at pre- 

 sent inquire, but shall deliver the history and cure of this dis- 

 ease, in so far as they have arisen from my own observation, 

 from that of Dr. Home, and of other skilful persons in this 

 neighbourhood. 



" In all the instances which I have quoted from Sauvages 

 and Eller, (Synopsis Nosol., p. 264, Cynanche trachealis,) it is 

 remarkable that the cases occurred in adults, and these some- 

 what advanced in life ; the three or four cases of Eller happened 

 towards the end of other diseases ; in short, there were very few 

 instances of this as a primary disease. Now so far did the state 

 of our knowledge on this subject extend, and we have to observe 

 that in all these accounts, in Boerhaave, Eller, and others, there 

 is not the slightest mention made of the disease as frequently 

 occurring in infants and proving fatal to them. Certainly Dr. 

 Home is the first who has treated of the subject eoo professo : 

 he found so little in medical writers with regard to it, that he 

 imagined it was a disease peculiar to Scotland, and even to cer- 

 tain parts of it only. I have no doubt of its being a very uni- 

 versal disease with regard to place and country : but we can 

 easily account for its not being much noticed, as it is a disease 

 which occurs in infants who cannot explain their feelings, and 

 as it proves suddenly fatal, leaving less time for calling the phy- 



