194 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



DCCXXII. It seems to me very improbable, that this should 

 have been really a new disease when it was first considered as 

 such. There appear to me very clear traces of it in authors 

 who wrote long before that period ; and, though there were not, 

 we know that the descriptions of the ancients were inaccurate 

 and imperfect, particularly with respect to cutaneous affections ; 

 while we know also very well, that those affections which usually 

 appeared as symptomatic only, were commonly neglected, or 

 confounded together under a general appellation. 



DCCXXIIL The antecedent symptoms of anxiety, sighing, 

 and pricking of the skin, which have been spoken of as peculiar 

 to this disease, are, however, common to many others ; and, per- 

 haps, to all those in which sweatings are forced out by a warm 

 regimen. 



Of the symptoms said to be concomitant of this eruption, 

 there are none which can be said to be constant and peculiar 

 but that of sweating. This, indeed, always precedes and ac- 

 companies this eruption ; and, while the miliary eruption attends 

 many different diseases, it never, however, appears in any of 

 these, but after sweating ; and, in persons labouring under these 

 diseases, it does not appear, if sweating be avoided. It is there- 

 fore probable, that the eruption is the effect of sweating ; and 

 that it is the produce of a matter not before prevailing in the 

 mass of blood, but generated, under particular circumstances, 

 in the skin itself. That it depends upon particular circum- 

 stances of the skin, appears further from hence, that the erup- 

 tion seldom or never appears upon the face, although it affects 

 the whole of the body besides ; that it comes upon those places 

 especially which are more closely covered ; and that it can be 

 brought out upon particular parts by external applications. 



DCCXXIV. It is to be observed, that this eruptive disease 

 differs from the other exanthemata in many circumstances ; in 

 its not being contagious, and therefore never epidemic ; " and if 

 certain epidemics are more certainly attended with it, I can im- 

 pute it to this, that in these epidemics those circumstances oc- 

 cur, which occasion this, as they do other eruptions ;" that 

 the eruption appears at no determined period of the disease ; 

 " sometimes it appears in the course of the first paroxysm, some- 

 times not till the eighth or ninth ;" that the eruption has no 



