[102] Before he finished his studies in medicine, he published a volume of ingenious and patriotic “Chemical and Economical Essays, designed to illustrate the connection between the theory and practice of chemistry, and the application of that science to some of the arts and manufactures of the United States of America.”
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE
BILIOUS REMITTING AND INTERMITTING
Yellow Fever,
AS IT
APPEARED IN PHILADELPHIA,
IN THE YEAR 1794.
I concluded the history of the symptoms of the bilious remitting yellow fever, as it appeared in Philadelphia in the year 1793, by taking notice, that the diseases which succeeded that fatal epidemic were all of a highly inflammatory nature.
In that history I described the weather and diseases of the months of March and April, in the spring of 1794.
The weather, during the first three weeks of the month of May, was dry and temperate, with now and then a cold day and night. The strawberries were ripe on the 15th, and cherries on the 22d day of the month, in several of the city gardens. A shower of hail fell on the afternoon of the 22d, which broke the glass windows of many houses. A single stone of this hail was found to weigh two drachms. Several people collected a quantity of it, and preserved it till the next day in their cellars, when they used it for the purpose of cooling their wine. The weather, after this hail storm, was rainy during the remaining part of the month. The diseases were still inflammatory. Many persons were afflicted with a sore mouth in this month.
The weather in June was pleasant and temperate. Several intermittents, and two very acute pleurisies, occurred in my practice during this month. The intermittents were uncommonly obstinate, and would not yield to the largest doses of the bark.
In a son of Mr. Samuel Coates, of seven years old, the bark produced a sudden translation of this state of fever to the head, where it produced all the symptoms of the first stage of internal dropsy of the brain. This once formidable disease yielded, in this case, to three bleedings, and other depleting medicines. The blood drawn in every instance was sizy.