2. An opthalmia which sometimes attended, yielded to astringent collyria and blisters.
3. Where a cough or fever followed so slight as not to require bleeding, I advised a milk and vegetable diet, country air, and moderate warmth; for whatever might have been the relation of the lungs in the beginning of the disease to cold air, they were now evidently too much debilitated to bear it.
4. It is a common practice to prescribe purges after the measles. After the asthenic state of this disease they certainly do harm. In all cases, the effects of them may be better obviated by diet, full or low, suitable clothing, and gentle exercise, or country air. I omitted them in several cases, and no eruption or disease of any kind followed their disuse.
I shall only add to this account of the measles, that in several families, I saw evident advantages from preparing the body for the reception of the contagion, by means of a vegetable diet.
AN ACCOUNT
OF
THE INFLUENZA,
AS IT APPEARED
IN PHILADELPHIA,
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1789, IN THE SPRING OF 1790, AND IN THE WINTER OF 1791.
The latter end of the month of August, in the summer of 1789, was so very cool that fires became agreeable. The month of September was cool, dry, and pleasant. During the whole of this month, and for some days before it began, and after it ended, there had been no rain. In the beginning of October, a number of the members of the first congress, that had assembled in New-York, under the present national government, arrived in Philadelphia, much indisposed with colds. They ascribed them to the fatigue and night air to which they had been exposed in travelling in the public stages; but from the number of persons who were affected, from the uniformity of their complaints, and from the rapidity with which it spread through our city, it soon became evident that it was the disease so well known of late years by the name of the influenza.
The symptoms which ushered in the disease were generally a hoarseness, a sore throat, a sense of weariness, chills, and a fever. After the disease was formed, it affected more or less the following parts of the body. Many complained of acute pains in the head. These pains were frequently fixed between the eye-balls, and, in three cases which came under my notice, they were terminated by abscesses in the frontal sinus, which discharged themselves through the nose. The pain, in one of these cases, before the rupture of the abscess, was so exquisite, that my patient informed me, that he felt as if he should lose his reason. Many complained of a great itching in the eye-lids. In some, the eye-lids were swelled. In others, a copious effusion of water took place from the eyes; and in a few, there was a true ophthalmia. Many complained of great pains in one ear, and some of pains in both ears. In some, these pains terminated in abscesses, which discharged for some days a bloody or purulent matter. In others, there was a swelling behind each ear, without a suppuration.—Sneezing was a universal symptom. In some, it occurred not less than fifty times in a day. The matter discharged from the nose was so acrid as to inflame the nostrils and the upper lip, in such a manner as to bring on swellings, sores, and scabs in many people. In some, the nose discharged drops, and in a few, streams of blood, to the amount, in one case, of twenty ounces. In many cases, it was so much obstructed, as to render breathing through it difficult. In some, there was a total defect of taste. In others, there was a bad taste in the mouth, which frequently continued through the whole course of the disease. In some, there was a want of appetite. In others, it was perfectly natural. Some complained of a soreness in their mouths, as if they had been inflamed by holding pepper in them. Some had swelled jaws, and many complained of the tooth-ach. I saw only one case in which the disease produced a coma.