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312 ON CATA'RRR. 



" city of Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgli, an 

 *' author of powerful genius. — The difcovery 

 " deferves to be regarded as one of the inoft in- 

 " genious and happy combinations ever formed 

 by the human mind, and in relation to thefe 

 iflands, perhaps, eventually the moft ufeful 

 recorded in the annals of medicine !" This 

 wonderful difcovery, it feems, is, that the com- 

 plaints in the membranes of the head, wind- 

 pipe, and cheft, which properly deferve the 

 name of hot or inflammatory catarrh, are not 

 owing fimply to cold, but to the concurrent 

 a6lion of cold and heat, or flimuli equivalent 

 to heat. Perfons in the habit of medical read- 

 ing, and familiarized, in confequence, with the 

 ever- varying phafes of medical hypothefis, 

 and the flippery nature of opinion, abfolutely 

 lofe the faculty of wondering, which elfe muft 

 be excited in a powerful degree by aflertions 

 like thefe. Allowing the genius of Brown, 

 (whether it tended to the veruin and the utile 

 is another queftion) where are we to find even 

 the femblance of novelty in the dof trine above 

 Hated? Who, that ever heard, read, or has 

 been perfonaliy fenfible of the effefts of ca- 

 tarrh, could poflibly remain ignorant of the 

 ufual, and frequently neceflary aflbciation of 

 heat and cold in that difeafe ? What wonder, 

 that heat, a neceffary confequence of obftruc- 

 tion, fhould be found among the fymptoms of 



a difeafe, 



