Page:Letters to Squire Pedant in the East.pdf/27

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LETTERS TO

migration to the occident. In consequence of great defatigation from continuous itineration, as well as on account of the lutarious condition of the roads, I indulged in a permansion with my debonnair german for the diuternity of a hebdomad. During this period, I witnessed no immementous matters. The multifarious cibarious substances engorged into inane and jejune stomachs, during the nuptial festivity, were extremely nosopoetic on the guests. Their morbific character evinced itself in almost all the organs of their corporeities.

Some were seized with xerophthalmy, megrim, and xerodes, — others, with sanguineous manations from their nasal orifices, or nebs — and others, with emesis or evomition. In some were generated gingival and hepatical intumescence, lateral fungi, and lippitude, others were subjects of catalepsis, subitaneous lipothymy, succeeded by subsultory exagitations. Dyspnœa, distention of the pericardium, and pneumonia induced by saltation and the inhalation of mundungus, beset others.

Couriers were ablegated from all points of the vicinage, to secure the adjuments of pharmacopolists, chirurgeons, and even of amethodists; but their prescriptions had no consimilitude. The one that officiated at the cabaret, imparted the sequacious pharmaceutical recipe: for xeropthalmy, megrim and lippitude, scarification on the cutaneous tegument of the cranium; — for lipothymy, the extravasation of their rubric fluid by venesection; for xerodes, a sudatory; for subsultory exagitations, a hypnotic; for nasal hemorrhages, styptics applied to that emunctory; for iliac and other intestinal disquietudes, stingo immixed with ginger; for the fungi, cauterization; for the imposthumes, cataplasms; for catalepsis, sinapisms; for dyspnœea, bronchotomy or pharyngotomy!