Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/267

 Rh the brain of an unknown quality; never by the supervention of anything like putridity.

The most beneficial treatment appeared to be general and local bleeding in the early stage, and leeching in all stages when the affection of any one organ was predominant, with mild aperients and common refrigerants: but I am bound to confess, that the result of no practice adopted by me, was sufficiently successful to satisfy myself, or to justify me to recommend it with any confidence.

During the period of my residence at Penzance, a few cases of fever occurred, which seemed to me, at the time, to be, and probably were, unconnected with contagion, or any influence either of an epidemic or endemic kind. They were most distinguished by disorder of the digestive organs, and as they occurred in the warmer season, they were, no doubt, members of that family which has at different times borne the name of bilious, mucous, gastric, &c. In no case did they put on any semblance of remittent; and neither in this, nor any other case of fever, was I ever led to employ bark, during my stay in Cornwall. According to the testimony of the older practitioners, sporadic fevers of a continued or imperfectly remittent character, and of a more contagious nature, were more frequently met with in former years, more particularly in the lowest and dampest localities, and on the more uncultivated moors.

In explanation of the cause of the continued prevalence of epidemic fever in this district, it will, I apprehend, be considered sufficient, by most persons, to refer to the economical details in the former