238 Epidemics. 



Such men as Abernethy, Sir A. Cooper, Dupuytren, Larey, 

 Lisfranc, Hennen, Mott, and Warren are men of a past 

 generation, who were as daring and skilful in surgery, with 

 many brilliant cotemporaries, as the world ever saw ; but 

 these men would have shrunk to do what we now do with 

 perfect success, not for want of skill or judgment, but from 

 that wholesome dread which experience gave them of the 

 extreme proneness which serous membranes had in their 

 time, from very slight injuries, to run into violent and fatal 

 inflammation. 



Perhaps some will say, Did they know the right use of 

 brandy and stimulants? Query : Do we know it ourselves ? 

 Do not cases do much better with malt liquors and wines, 

 than with the newly acquired property which alcohol gets 

 by being isolated by the heat applied to the Still ; whereby 

 is gendered a craving for the like to be repeated, immediately 

 upon recovery from a debauch and sickness from its presence 

 the night before ? This appears to be contrary to nature, 

 and certainly our ordinary malt liquors do not usually create 

 such an unnatural craving, and are much safer and more sus- 

 taining and, above all, our numerous kinds of wines than 

 distilled liquors, however little or much diluted. 



The great increase in the use of ferruginous medicines, 

 either artificially prepared, or supplied at some one of 

 Nature's numerous springs, tends greatly to show how much 

 attention is given to languid action of the heart ; an action, 

 also, almost invariably present where there is much 

 neuralgia, however much the venous system locally, in the 

 neighbourhood of neuralgia, may be heated and congested 

 by plus of blood to the affected part. 



If, upon the whole, the force or power of the heart is 

 lower now than fifty years ago, what ought the natural 

 difference in the type of disease to be ? This is a hard and 



