INFLAMMATIONS. (?7 



doubtful if the name was then applied to the same disease to 

 which we now apply it. It appears to me, that unless some of 

 the cases described under the title of Catarrhus Suffocativus be 

 supposed to have been of the kind I am now to treat of, there 

 was no description of this disease given before that by Syden- 

 ham under the title I have employed here. 



CCCLXXVII. After Sydenham, Boerhaave was the first 

 who in a system took notice of it as a distinct disease ; and he 

 has described it in his aphorisms, although with some circum- 

 stances different from those in the description of Sydenham. 

 Of late, Mr. Lieutaud has with great confidence asserted, that 

 Sydenham and Boerhaave had, under the same title, described 

 different diseases ; and that, perhaps, neither of them had, on 

 this subject, delivered any thing but hypothesis. 



CCCLXXVIII. Notwithstanding this bold assertion, I am 

 humbly of opinion, and the Baron Van Swieten seems to have 

 been of the same, that Sydenham and Boerhaave did describe, 

 under the same title, one and the same disease. Nay, I am 

 further of opinion, that the disease described by Mr. Lieutaud 

 himself, is not essentially different from that described by both 

 the other authors. Nor will the doubts of the very learned but 

 modest Morgagni, on this subject, disturb us, if we consider 

 that, while very few describers of diseases either have it in their 

 power, or have been sufficiently attentive in distinguishing be- 

 tween the essential and accidental symptoms of disease, so, in a 

 disease which may have not only different, but a greater num- 

 ber of symptoms in one person than it has in another, we need 

 not wonder, that the descriptions of the same disease by different 

 persons should come out in some respects different. I shall, 

 however, enter no farther into this controversy, but endeavour 

 to describe the disease as it has appeared to myself; and, as I 

 judge, in the essential symptoms, much the same as it has ap- 

 peared to all the other authors mentioned. 



CCCLXXIX. This disease appears at the same seasons that 

 other pneumonic and catarrhal affections commonly do ; that is, 

 in autumn and in spring. Like these diseases also, it is seem- 

 ingly occasioned by sudden changes of the weather from heat to 

 cold. It appears also, during the prevalence of contagious 

 catarrhs ; and it is frequently under the form of the Peripneu- 



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