500 
ON REDWATER. 
Having stated something like the appearances living and dead, 
we will consider what cause or causes are likely to produce them. 
There are no appearances indicating the existence of common, 
or, as the old nosologists called it, phlegmonous inflammation; 
and therefore I will pass that by, and call your attention to a 
class of diseases called fevers in the human subject (and which, 
though not generally allowed to exist at all, will, I doubt not, 
sooner or later, be more distinguished as affecting inferior ani¬ 
mals), by which I understand certain affections, produced by 
unexplained causes (and limited to particular districts), in which 
the different functions are suspended or destroyed, according to 
the violence of the attack or the constitutions and circumstances 
of the affected, where, though some assistance may be given and 
injurious treatment prevailed, yet nature appears to struggle for 
recovery, and obtains it often by some particular secretion or 
discharge. From this class then, if we may reason from analogy 
(and that we must often), may be found some one which will 
bear a comparison with our subject, and which I need not en¬ 
large upon, or say more in the way of cause only, that very simi¬ 
lar effects are produced by some vegetable poisons, particularly 
meadow saffron, and which is common on farms where red water 
is met with. Moreover, there are cases met with at the same 
seasons, supposed to be occasioned by saffron, and where the 
symptoms are exactly the same, with the exception of the urine 
not being affected. In one case, which occurred this year, a 
considerable quantity of colchicum seed was found in the sto¬ 
mach. Another case, which I attended myself, was as like red- 
water as possible in every thing except the urine, and got well 
from similar treatment; but another case occurred within a few 
days, in which the urine was red, and therefore my attendance 
was not required for two days, and the cow died within a few 
hours after I saw her. That vegetable poisons will produce the 
general symptoms there can be no question; and arguments may 
be adduced on each side so nearly balanced, that it must, I fear, 
for the present remain undecided ; but the best case to shew that 
it is taken in with the food, is that of a cow that was bought 
early in the spring, and put upon hay grown upon a farm which 
is notorious for producing the disease; this, however, though 
worthy of remark, is not conclusive. 
With regard to the difference supposed to exist in red and 
black water, I believe the disease to be the same, and the dif¬ 
ference in the colour of the urine arises from the blood not under¬ 
going the natural change by circulating freely through the lungs ; 
and therefore, in the most violent and advanced stages it is much 
darker, and colours the urine in the same degree. Then, as to the 
