Medicine. 2 85 



^asc, seem to have settled the detennuiatlon of 

 jHiysicians to extend the same remedy to the treat- 

 ment of fevers. And the conviction since wrought 

 by experience and observation, both on the public 

 and medical mind, may now be said to have 

 established this improvement on the jfirmest basis. 



It is remarkable that although the use of cold 

 air and cold w^ater had been recommended in ar- 

 dent fevers by Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, 

 and most of the celebrated physicians of antiquity, 

 as well as by many eminent moderns, it was dis- 

 countenanced by BoERHAAVE and all the disciples 

 of his school. In his commentator Van Swieten, 

 and in the writings of Pringle, Cleghorn, Lind^ 

 and even Cullen, little is to be found in commen- 

 dation of this salutary practice. It remained for the 

 learned and judicious Dr. Currie, of Liverpool, in 

 Great-Britain, to extend the cool regimen in fevers, 

 by adding to the use of cool air and cold drinks, 

 the affusion of cold water over the surface of the 

 body, when in a very dry and heated state. This 

 remedy, the application of which, by long ex- 

 perience, he has been enabled precisely to regulate 

 and determine, may be confidently pronounced to 

 be one of the greatest of modern improvements in 

 the practice of physic.'" 



In the course of the century under review, some 

 particular diseases have been treated with more 

 success than in former periods. It may not be im- 

 proper to direct the attention of the reader to a 

 few of the most remarkable of these. 



The triumph of medicine over the Small-Pox has 

 been completed in the eighteenth century. This 

 scourge of the human race has exceeded all other 

 diseases in the number of its victims, and in the 



•a; Sec Dx-. Currie's Medical Report f on the EJj'tds of iratir^ cold and 

 ^arv.^ as a Remedy in Fcvir^ and other Disease*, 



