352 Medicine. [Chap. IV. 



and medical mind, may now be said to have esta- 

 blished this improvement on the firmest basis. 



It is remarkable, that, aUhough the use of cold 

 air and cold water 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 discountenanced 

 by Boerhaave and all the disciples of his school. 

 In his commentator Van Swieten, and in the writ- 

 ings of Pringle, Cleghorn, Lind, and even Cullen, 

 little is to be found in commendation of this sa- 

 lutary practice. It remained for the learned and 

 judicious Dr. Currie, of Liverpool, to extend the 

 cool regimen in fevers, by adding to the use of 

 cool air and cool 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 experience, he has been enabled 

 precisely to regulate and determine, may be confi- 

 dently 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 

 improper 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 

 frequency of deforaiity, blindness, and other dread- 



* See Dr. Currie's Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, cold 

 QTid iiai-m, as a Remedy in Fever, and other Diseases. 



