VOL. XXXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 355 



ly emptied. But even if the water alone should be rejected as soon as it is 

 swallowed, yet the patient should persist in drinking it, taking it in larger 

 quantities and more frequently. Its exhibition is also to be continued, although 

 a hiccup supervene. But a sweat coming upon a patient under this aqueous re- 

 gimen, exhausts his strength, and is attended with great danger ; so different 

 are the effects of cold water administered according to this method, from those 

 which follow the use of Hancock's magnum febrifugum.* A sweat, therefore, 

 breaking out during the use of the aqueous regimen, should be checked by 

 giving the water still colder and in larger quantities, as well as by throwing the 

 bed-clothes from off" the patient, and by ventilating the chamber. — When a 

 patient is delirious or comatose, it becomes extremely difficult to administer the 

 water in sufficient quantities. Compulsion must then be resorted to, that as 

 much may be got down as possible. On such occasions Dr. C. mentions that 

 he has sometimes crammed snow into the mouths of his patients. 



Then follow some remarks concerning the kinds of fever (hereafter specified) 

 and the proper time in those fevers, for subjecting the patients to this treat- 

 ment ; which should not be adopted at the very beginning, but generally in the 

 height and during the utmost violence of the disorder. Hence it has often 

 succeeded when the patient seemed to be in the agonies of death. On the 

 other hand much injury has often been occasioned by some physicians, who 

 have resorted to this remedy too early ; with the exception of bilious fevers, in. 

 which it has sometimes been employed in the beginning with advantage. 



This aqueous regimen is suited to acute fevers and all kinds of malignant and 

 pernicious fevers. — In some cases, however, Dr. C. mentions that he prescribed 

 warm instead of cold water, viz. where inflammations of the lungs and viscera 

 were joined with the fevers. Yet even in these cases he sometimes passed from 

 warm water to water that was cool, when the patients loathed the warm water, 

 and could not be prevailed upon to drink it constantly. Although Dr. C. ex- 

 perienced the best effects from the use of this aqueous regimen in a great num- 

 ber of fever-cases ; yet he does not deny that, like all other grand remedies, it 

 sometimes failed. 



Thus far Dr. C.'s observations apply to the administration of cold water in 

 fevers ; but he adds that he has prescribed it with good effect in a variety of 

 other disorders ; such as diarrhoea and dysentery ; coeliac and lienteric affection; 

 ischuria renalis and dysury ; cardialgia and cholera morbus ; hypochondriac 



* Febrifugum Magnum : or Common Water the best Cure for Fevers. By John Hancock, D. D. 

 &c. Lond. 1722. Dr. H. represents cold water to be the best possible sweating medicine in fevers, 

 and ascribes its febrifuge virtues wholly to the perspiration which it excites. 



z z2 



