Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/150

120 Intermittent fever, 2 Remittent fever, 1 Small-pox, 1 Erysipelas, 1 Hepatitis, 1 Hydrocephalus, 1 Acute diseases of infants, 8.

Chronic diseases.—Cough and dyspnœa, 46 Pulmonary consumption, 4 Tabes and marasmus, 2 Pleurodyne, 3 Hœmoptoe, 3 Hœmatemesis, 1 Lumbago and sciatica, 8 Chronic rheumatism, 9 Cephalalgia, 4 Asthenia, 6 Jaundice, 2 Gastrodynia, 3 Enterodynia, 2 Diarrhœa, 4 Dysure, 2 Dyspepsia, 4 Dysentery, 4 Chronic opthalmia, 3 Hypochondriasis, 2 Menorrhagia, 2 Amenorrhœa, 3 Chlorosis, 2 Dysmenorrhœa, 3 Dropsy, 2.

This is the season when we are to expect pulmonic complaints to abound. The inhabitants of this island are particularly subject to them; they generally prevail from the end of November to the beginning of May; and after resisting the utmost efforts of medical aid, about that period cease, not from the beneficial effects of medicines, but because the agent which excited them no longer acts. When we consider the admirable structure and delicate organization of the lungs; the exquisite fineness and sensibility of the air-cells upon which such an infinite number of minute vessels ramify; the astonishing changes which the blood undergoes in them, and their vast importance to the system; whilst they are particularly exposed to every vicissitude of temperature—we must rather admire that so many people escape, than that so many are affected with complaints in these organs. It is not a cough alone, or what is vulgarly termed "catching cold," which occasions pulmonary consumption, a disease which annually carries off thousands of the finest of our youth. People continue to cough, almost to suffocation, from childhood to old age: who has not witnessed the convulsive efforts of the asthmatic, or the struggles of old men with their winter companion? yet these attain a comfortable series of years, quitting their obstinate coughs when the summer months approach, as regularly as they cast off their great-coats. Nothing is more absurd and erroneous than the supposition that cough is the cause of consumption; it is indeed one of its most distressing symptoms, but the philosophical enquirer does not mistake a symptom of a disease for its cause: for this we must search deeper into the arcana of nature, and probably we may find it in a peculiar state of constitution. What this state is, how it is generated, and what may be the likeliest means of counteracting it, I shall possibly offer some opinions upon in the course of these reports: it is sufficient at present to declare my conviction, that the alarm sounded through the country by certain individuals, is carried to a ridiculous extent, is calculated to excite dismay in persons of delicate feelings, and actually to produce the complaint which its propagators affect to be so anxious to remove.

The case of small-pox inserted in the list, terminated fatally on the 12th day of eruption. It occurred in a stout young man of middle age, and was of the confluent sort, from which very few adults who are seized with it escape. It affords another melancholy instance of the prejudice and folly of men, in re-