Dr. Home, I have elsewhere remarked[128], lost [**LQU]one out of four of his patients in Jamaica.” His remedies were moderate bleeding and purging, and afterwards bark, wine, and external applications of blankets dipped in hot vinegar.
Dr. Blane pronounces the yellow fever to be [**LQU]one of the most fatal diseases to which the human body is subject, and in which human art is the most unavailing.” His remedies were bleeding, bark, blisters, acid drinks, saline draughts, and camomile tea.
Dr. Chisholm acknowledges that he lost one in twelve of all the patients he attended in the fever of Grenada. His principal remedy was a salivation. I shall hereafter show the inferiority of this single mode of depleting, to a combination of it with bleeding and purging. In Philadelphia and Baltimore, where bleeding, purging, and salivation were used in due time, and after the manner that has been described, not more than one in fifty died of the yellow fever. It is probable that greater certainty and success in the treatment of this disease will not easily be attained, for idiosyncracy, and habits of intemperance which resist or divert the operation of the most proper remedies, a dread of the lancet, or the delay of an hour in the use of it, the partial application of that or any other remedy, the unexpected recurrence of a paroxysm of fever in the middle of the night, or the clandestine exhibition of wine or laudanum by friends or neighbours, often defeat the best concerted plans of cure by a physician. Heaven in this, as in other instances, kindly limits human power and benevolence, that in all situations man may remember his dependence upon the power and goodness of his Creator.
Footnotes:
[103] Histoire des Maladies de Saint Domingue, p. 112.
[104] Epidemics, book XI. sect. I.
[105] Les Maladies de St. Domingue, vol. I. p. 193.
[106] Account of the Yellow Fever of 1793.
[107] In the account of the effects of morbid action and inflammation, in the Outlines of the Theory of Fever, the author neglected to mention the change of certain fluids from their natural to a dark colour. It appears in the secretions of the stomach and bowels, in the bile, in the urine, in carbuncles, and occasionally in the matter which is produced by blisters. All these changes occur in the yellow fever, and, in common with the other effects of fever that have been enumerated, are the result of peculiar actions in the vessels, derived from one cause, viz. morbid excitement.
[108] Essay on the Malignant Pestilential Fever introduced into the West-Indies from Beullam, p. 137.