8. Head-ach.
9. A preternatural dilatation of the pupils. This was universal. I was much struck in observing the pupil in one of the eyes of a young man who called upon me for advice, to be of an oblong figure. Whether it was natural, or the effect of the miasmata acting on his brain, I could not determine.
It will be thought less strange that the miasmata should produce these changes in the systems of persons who resided constantly in the city, when I add, that many country people who spent but a few hours in the streets in the day, in attending the markets, were infected by the disease, and sickened and died after they returned home; and that others, whom business compelled to spend a day or two in the city during the prevalence of the fever, but who escaped an attack of it, declared that they were indisposed, during the whole time, with languor or head-ach.
I was led to observe and record the above effects of the miasmata upon persons in apparent good health, by a fact I met with in Dr. Mitchell's history of the yellow fever in Virginia, in the year 1741. In that fever, blood drawn from a vein was always dissolved. The same state of the blood was observed in many persons who had been exposed to the miasmata, who discovered no other symptom of the disease.
A woman whom I had formerly cured of a mania, who lived in an infected neighbourhood, had a fresh attack of that disease, accompanied by an unusual menstrual flux. I ascribed both these complaints to the action of the miasmata upon her system.
The smell emitted from a patient, in a clean room, was like that of the small-pox, but in most cases of a less disagreeable nature. Putrid smells in sick rooms were the effects of the excretions, or of some other filthy matters. In small rooms, crowded in some instances with four or five sick people, there was an effluvia that produced giddiness, sickness at stomach, a weakness of the limbs, faintness, and in some cases a diarrhœa. I met with a fœtid breath in one patient, which was not the effect of that medicine which sometimes produces it.
The state of the atmosphere, during the whole month of September, and the first two weeks in October, favoured the accumulation of the miasmata in the city.
The register of the weather shows how little the air was agitated by winds during the above time. In vain were changes in the moon expected to alter the state of the air. The light of the morning mocked the hopes that were raised by a cloudy sky in the evening. The sun ceased to be viewed with pleasure. Hundreds sickened every day beneath the influence of his rays: and even where they did not excite the disease, they produced a languor in the body unknown to the oldest inhabitant of the city, at the same season of the year.