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VOL. XLIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRAX'SACTIONS. 571' 



stance of the intestines. Their lungs were full of blood, and in the back part 

 adhering to the pleura. Those, who had a slight looseness only in the morning, 

 which did not check the sweats, recovered. Some of the malignant fevers, 

 which were at the H6tel Dieu in J 750, were reported to be caused by infection 

 conveyed in bales of horse-hair, to which was left some of the animals' flesh, 

 that was become putrefied; and yet these fevers did not differ from others which 

 we have already described. 



A girl about 20 years of age, who died of this fever, had the mesentery filled 

 with obstructed glands, and the intestines mortified in different places. A man 

 had, besides these symptoms, almost the whole mesentery mortified, and an an- 

 thrax or carbuncle at the upper and fore-part of the arm-pit, and the whole body 

 of a livid colour. This carbuncle proves, that these malignant fevers were some- 

 thing pestilential. 



M. le Cat makes no mention of the small-pox, which hardly ever leaves this 

 climate in any season of the year, but which is more common towards the end 

 of summer, and in autumn, and for the most part is accompanied with the mi- 

 liary eruptions, which he had already observed to be joined to all these diseases, 

 and which seldom failed to render them mortal. He opened several of these 

 variolous bodies, and in the greater nuniber found superficial ulcers on the ner- 

 vous coat of the stomach, towards its upper orifice, with livid and inflammatory 

 spots on the other parts of the same, as also on the intestines (though in a small 

 number) and the glands of the mesentery enlarged, and hardened. 



In the year 1752, and beginning of 53, these malignant fevers, that put on 

 the appearance of peripneumonies, became mortal in 7 days, and they discovered, 

 that they were occasioned by a suppurative inflammation of the pericardium. 

 Laxative medicines, quickened by an emetic, were most successful against these 

 inflammations. 



About the end of the year 1753, and beginning of 34, these malignant fevers, 

 which had their seat in the stomach, small guts, and partly in the lungs, ap- 

 peared again, and seized a great number of persons of distinction. This cir- 

 cumstance made them be considered as a new distemper by those who did not 

 attend to it sooner; and the havock they had usually made, being rendered more 

 remarkable by the quality of those who were the unhappy victims, gave the 

 suspicion throughout Europe of having the plague. These reasons redoubled 

 the diligence of the gentlemen of the faculty. The physicians met together, at 

 their college, several times, to communicate their observations on these diseases. 

 M. le Cat thinks they may be divided into 3 degrees. 



The patients of the first degree felt, at the beginning, a lassitude, and pain in 

 the joints, attended with some fever, the fits of which went off by sweats. 



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