17. The remedies which appeared to do most service in this disease were vomits of tartar emetic, gentle dozes of laxative salts, bark, wine, volatile salt, opium, and blisters.
18. An emetic seldom failed of checking this fever if exhibited while it was in a forming state, and before the patient was confined to his bed.
19. Many causes concurred to produce, and increase this fever; such as the want of cleanliness, excessive fatigue, the ignorance or negligence of officers in providing suitable diet and accommodations for their men, the general use of linen instead of woollen clothes in the summer months, and the crowding too many patients together in one hospital, with such other inconveniences and abuses, as usually follow the union of the purveying and directing departments of hospitals in the same persons. But there is one more cause of this fever which remains to be mentioned, and that is, the sudden assembling of a great number of persons together of different habits and manners, such as the soldiers of the American army were in the years 1776 and 1777. Doctor Blane informs us, in his observations upon the diseases of seamen, “that it sometimes happens that a ship with a long established crew shall be very healthy, yet if strangers are introduced among them, who are also healthy, sickness will be mutually produced.” The history of diseases furnishes many proofs of the truth of this assertion[51]. It is very remarkable, that while the American army at Cambridge, in the year 1775, consisted only of New-Englandmen (whose habits and manners were the same) there was scarcely any sickness among them. It was not till the troops of the eastern, middle, and southern states met at New-York and Ticonderoga, in the year 1776, that the typhus became universal, and spread with such peculiar mortality in the armies of the United States.
20. The dysentery prevailed, in the summer of 1777, in the military hospitals of New-Jersey, but with very few instances of mortality. This dysentery was frequently followed by an obstinate diarrhœa, in which the warm bath was found in many cases to be an effectual remedy.
21. I saw several instances of fevers occasioned by the use of the common ointment made of the flour of sulphur and hog's lard, for the cure of the itch. The fevers were probably brought on by the exposure of the body to the cold air, in the usual method in which that ointment is applied. I have since learned, that the itch may be cured as speedily by rubbing the parts affected, two or three times, with the dry flour of sulphur, and that no inconvenience, and scarcely any smell, follow this mode of using it.
22. In gun-shot wounds of the joints, Mr. Ranby's advice of amputating the limb was followed with success. I saw two cases of death where this advice was neglected.
23. There was one instance of a soldier who lost his hearing, and another of a soldier who had been deaf who recovered his hearing, by the noise of artillery in a battle.
24. Those soldiers who were billetted in private houses, generally escaped the hospital fever, and recovered soonest from all their diseases.
25. Hospitals built of coarse logs, with ground floors, with fire-places in the middle of them, and a hole in the roof, for the discharge of smoke, were found to be very conducive to the recovery of the soldiers from the hospital fever. This form of a military hospital was introduced into the army by Dr. Tilton of the state of Delaware[52].