2y^ November 1748. 



tions ^s lived far off. There have been fe- 

 veral people at Penn's necky who, withont 

 vifiting their fick friends, have got the 

 pleurify and died of it : I do not difpute the 

 truth of this, though I do not agree to the 

 cpnclufion. The pleurify w^as the moft vio- 

 lent in November 'y yet fome old people died 

 of it even in the next winter; but children 

 were pretty free from it. The phyficians 

 did not know what to make of it, nor how 

 to remedy it. 



It is difficult to determine the caufes of 

 fuch violent difeafes. An old Engli/h fur- 

 geon who lived here gave the following 

 reafon. The inhabitants of this country 

 drink great quantities of punch and other 

 ftrong liquors in fummer, when it is very 

 hot ; by that means the veins in the dia- 

 phragm contract, and the blood grows thick. 

 Towards the end of OBober and the begin- 

 ning of November, the weather is apt to 

 alter very fuddenly, fo that heat and cold 

 change feveral times a day. When the 

 people during this changeable weather are 

 in the open air, they commonly get this 

 difeafe. It is likewife certain that the air 

 is more unwholefome one year, than ano- 

 ther, which depends upon the heat, and 

 other circumftances : this peculiar quality 

 of the air muft of courfe prodi^ce a pleurify. 



It 



