Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/59

Rh to be seized with it in the open fields, and had crept into the meanest hut, which could hardly afford a shelter from the inclemency of the winter.

What I have now been saying relates to the natural, rather than to the artificial small-pox. This last is so mild of itself, that, when nothing is done to render it dangerous, seemingly harsh means need never be used. I only desire that every patient under inoculation avoid both excesses of heat and cold; that they breathe a cool air; and that their own sensations be the measure of this temperature. Let them act in this respect as if they were in health, and consulted their conveniency alone in the choice of their air. The heat of their body, increased by the disorder, will, it is true, encrease their desire of cool air; and such a degree of cold as would be rather disagreeable in health, will be extremely grateful in the small-pox. But this very desire is the voice of nature, and the relief, which immediately follows the gratifying of it, shews that this voice is not deceitful.

I cannot help observing, that every physician must know this to be the doctrine of Sydenham, Boerhaave, and all the great masters of our art. Not one of them would dare to avow the contrary opinion in print; and yet how many suffer their patients to be stifled up in hot rooms, and debarred from the benefit of cool air, merely in compliance with vulgar prejudice, founded on a mistaken notion that heat drives the humors toward the skin, that cold repels them, and consequently that warmth Rh