112 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNN0 1725. 



ful diluting liquors, as this, and so prepares them to be discharged by proper 

 outlets. As to oxymel scillit. syringing, and the like, in a defective salivation; 

 the former by vomiting, sometimes irritates the glands of the membrana 

 schneideriana to discharge their contents ; syringing barely deterges the mouths 

 of the ductus salivares : either have little certain effect further; whereas the 

 viscous obstructing n)atter is lodged in the inmost glands, and even in the blood 

 itself. 



This method seems peculiarly adapted to such an epidemic small pox as now 

 described, in which are all the indications imaginable of a very viscid state of 

 humours. The blood, when drawn, was always excessively viscous, especially 

 at the state of the disease: frequently there was little or no salivation ; generally 

 it was extremely glutinous ; so that the nurses were often obliged to pull the 

 matter out of the patient's mouth with their fingers ; and without drinking very 

 plentifully, it would soon cease. A diarrhoea very seldom liappened to children. 

 The blisters soon dried up. None were known to make bloody urine. Where 

 that dreadful symptom happens, the crasis of the blood seems to be dissolved, 

 as Lyster well observes ; on the contrary, the recited symptoms argued a too 

 compact and viscous diathesis of the blood. 



This state of the humours, during this constitution, might partly depend on 

 the extraordinary driness of the season, and the almost constant northerly and 

 easterly winds, which prevailed in the a)onths of October, November, February 

 and March. From the middle of January to the middle of April, was a drier 

 season than ever was known in this county, where we have generally more 

 continued rain, than in most places in England, Plymouth being infamous for 

 wet weather. 



This remarkable change of the temperature of the air must needs have some 

 considerable effect on human bodies: a very cold wind suffering only the thinner 

 part of the blood to pass off by perspiration : nor in such seasons does the body 

 imbibe so much of a diluting humidity from the air, as Keill observes. Hence 

 the necessity of drinking plentifully of thin diluting liquors, which, as it is always 

 proper in this distemper, so in such a season it is highly necessary. And probably 

 M. Andry's method of bathing in warm water and milk, or warm milk, before 

 the eruption, may, upon many accounts, be proper in such a constitution of 

 the air. There can be no objection against it, but its not being in fashion. 



The Doctor took particular notice, that while, and just after the easterly 

 winds blew excessively strong for 7 or 8 days together, in the months of 

 October and November, the patients in the small-pox scarcely salivated at all. 

 Then particularly, an adult person, who had the confluent pox very severely, 

 did not spit the least through the whole course of the disease ; she was seized 



