568 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1755. 



the ravages of which continued during the subsequent months of Dec. Jan. and 

 part of Feb. But before he enters on the history of this epidemic, he gives 

 an account of the diseases which prevailed during some of the preceding years. 



The medical gentlemen, who had practised in Rouen from the beginning of 

 the 18th century, state, that, for the last 30 years, that country had been more 

 subject to malignant fevers than it had ever been before; and that the greatest 

 part of them had been accompanied with miliary eruptions. M. le Cat fixes this 

 epocha in 1723 and 1724, because the first of these years was excessively dry, 

 the rain at Paris amounting to no more than 7 inches 8 lines, while the mean 

 year comes to IQ, and the year 1724 had only 12; while the year 1725 pro- 

 duced more than 17-J- inches, which should cause a temperature nearly approach- 

 ing to the mean quantity, which may be considered as the most healthy. 



He observed in 1736 and 1737 certain gangrenous sore throats, which chiefly 

 attacked children; they appeared again in 1748, in young persons of the first 

 distinction, not only at Rouen, but also at St. Cyr, near Versailles, and at Paris. 

 Persons of a certain age were also seized with it, not only in town, but in the 

 country; and in some the tongue alone was the seat of the gangrenous eschar. 

 In the same years 1737 and 1738, there was a great number of malignant perip- 

 neumonies, of that kind called pituitous. The lungs of these subjects, many 

 of which he opened, were become schirrous; and the patients perished for want 

 of being able to admit air into them, as if they had been strangled. Some of 

 them most earnestly begged him to open their breasts, imagining that a new vent 

 would give them breath. 



In 1739 they had, at the Hotel Dieu, continual fevers, with frequent faintings: 

 and the patients, without any violent symptom, died in 6 or 7 days. He found 

 small abscesses in the substance of their hearts, near the auricles. Nothing 

 remarkable happened from 1739 to 1743, but that the finest, longest, and 

 driest summer he ever knew in Normandy, produced epidemical bloody-fluxes, 

 which grievously afflicted both Rouen and the whole country round about. 

 These fluxes were preceded by great lowness of spirits, attended with violent 

 colics, and a sharp fever: the pulse small, the mouth and tongue foul, a nasty 

 taste in the mouth, and frequent nausea; and whenever a hiccup came on, 

 death was not far off. 



The principal seat of this distemper was in the large intestines ; though some- 

 times the small guts and stomach had their share. In one, who voided pure 

 blood a little before his death, he found a great portion of the intestinal canal 

 full of blood, the villous coat being much swelled, and greatly inflamed; and, 

 putting it in water, one might easily discern, with a magnifying glass, a great 

 number of red points, which appeared to be the mouths of the vessels, which 

 poured out the blood found in the intestines. Another had blood discharged 



