Si*. I. 15. 4. THEORY OF FEVER. 497 



Sickness might also be produced probably with advantage by 

 whirling the patient in a chair suspended from the ceiling by two 

 parallel cords; which after being revolved fifty or a hundred 

 times in one direction, would return with great circular velocity, 

 and produce vertigo, similar I suppose to sea- sickness. And 

 lastly, the sickness produced by respiring an atmosphere mixed 

 wifh one tenth of carbonated hydrogen, discovered by Mr. Watt, 

 and published by Dr. Beddoes, would be well worthy exact and 

 repeated experiment. 



4. Cool air, cool fomentations, or ablutions, are also useful 

 in this inflammatory fever; as by cooling the particles of blood 

 in the cutaneous and pulmonary vessels, they must return to the 

 heart with less stimulus, than when they are heated above the 

 natural degree of ninety-eight. For this purpose snow and ice 

 have beup scattered on the patients in Italy; and cold bathing 

 has been used at the eruption of the small-pox in China, and 

 both, it is said, with advantage. See Class III. 2, 1. 12. and 

 Suppl. I. 8. 



5. The lancet however with repeated mild cathartics is the 

 great ugent in destroying this enormous excitement of the sys- 

 tem, so long as the strength of the patient will admit of evacua- 

 tions. Blisters over the painful part, where the phlegmon or topi- 

 cal inflammation is situated, after great evacuation, is of evident 

 service, as in pleurisy. Warm bathing for half an hour twice a 

 ih. j when the patient becomes enfeebled, is of great benefit, as in 

 peripneumony and rheumatism. 



6. When other means fail of success in abating the violent 

 excitement of the system in inflammatory diseases, might not 

 the shaved head be covered with large bladders of cold water, in 

 which ice or salt had been recently dissolved; and changed as 

 often as necessary, till the brain is rendered in some degree tor- 

 pid by cold? Might not a greater degree of cold, as iced water, 

 or snow, be applied to the cutaneous capillaries? 



7. Another experiment 1 have frequently wished to try^ which 

 cannot be done in private practice, and which I therefore re- 

 commend to some hospital physician; and that is, to endeavour 

 to siill the violent actions of the heart and arteries, after due 

 evacuations by venesection and cathartics, by gently compressing 

 the brain. This might be done by suspending a bed, so as to 

 whirl the patient round with his head most distant from the cen- 

 tre of motion, as if he lay across a mill-stone, as described in 

 Sect. XVIII. 20. For this purpose a perpendicular shaft armed 

 with iron gudgeons might have one end passed into the floor, and 

 the other into a beam in the ceiling, with an horizontal arm, 

 to which a small bed might be readiiy suspended. 



VOL. ii. 3 s 



