802 FATAL INFLUENCE OF COLD 



from diseases of the nervous system, old age, and 

 sudden deaths, the mortality is nearly double in 

 winter what it is in summer in the city of London, 

 while from pneumonia, asthma, hooping-cough, 

 croup, bronchitis, influenza, pleurisy, quinsey, 

 laryngitis, and hydrothorax, the difference has 



rain, during a long walk before breakfast, in the month of March, 

 soon after which, he was attacked with a chill that lasted several 

 hours, causing torpor, congestion, and inflammation of the thoracic 

 and abdominal organs, followed by general fever, that terminated 

 fatally in a few days. The melancholy death of Robert Burns 

 in the meridian of life, was caused by exposure to cold damp night 

 air, after a fit of intemperance ; and by sea bathing, recommended 

 by his medical adviser, when reduced to a state of great debility. 

 And that of the celebrated William Pinckney, of Maryland, ori- 

 ginated from a cold brought on by sitting up until four o'clock in 

 the morning, in a cold room reading the Pirate, just then published. 

 The greatest poet of the nineteenth century also lost his life in 

 the full vigour of his faculties, from exposure to a heavy shower 

 of rain on the 1 Oth of April, 1 824, and by remaining for some time 

 in an open boat with his wet clothes on. Soon after this, he was 

 attacked with shivering, languor, pains in the head, back, and 

 limbs, followed by a low fever, for which he was bled twenty 

 ounces on the 17th, and the operation repeated twice the next day, 

 followed by faintness, delirium, coma, cold sweats, and death on 

 the 19th. (Moore's Life of Byron.) 



Now I appeal to the common sense of all intelligent men, 

 whether immediate recourse to the warm bath, surrounding the 

 patients with bottles of hot water, or bags of hot salt, would not 

 have prevented the chill, and consequently the fever or inflam- 

 mation, that carried off these illustrious individuals ? and whether, 

 in the case of General Washington, the immediate application of 

 hot fomentations to the throat, with the free use of hot gargles, 

 would not have overcome the torpor of the capillaries lining the 

 larynx, and thus have arrested the disease in embryo ? 



