4. The symptoms of congestion in the brain, resembling those which occur in the first stage of hydrocephalus internus, a disease in which I had lately used bleeding with success.
5. The character of the diseases which had preceded the yellow fever. They were all more or less inflammatory. Even the scarlatina anginosa had partaken so much of that diathesis, as to require bleeding to subdue it.
6. The warm and dry weather which had likewise preceded the fever. Dr. Sydenham attributes a highly inflammatory state of the small-pox to a previously hot and dry summer; and I have since observed, that Dr. Hillary takes notice of inflammatory fevers having frequently succeeded hot and dry weather in Barbadoes[74]. He informs us further, that the yellow fever is always most acute and inflammatory after a very hot season[75].
7. The authority of Dr. Mosely had great weight with me in advising the loss of blood, more especially as his ideas of the highly inflammatory nature of the fever accorded so perfectly with my own.
8. I was induced to prescribe blood-letting by recollecting its good effects in Mrs. Palmer's son, whom I bled on the 20th of August, and who appeared to have been recovered by it.
Having begun to bleed, I was encouraged to continue it by the appearance of the blood, and by the obvious and very great relief my patients derived from it.
The following is a short account of the appearances of the blood drawn from a vein in this disease.
1. It was, in the greatest number of cases, without any separation into crassamentum and serum, and of a scarlet colour.