“Your acquaintance, Mrs. Guthrie, lately returned from a tour on account of health, along the north shore of the Black Sea. Among much important and curious information, she gave me some account of the cure employed for the bite of this mortal spider, which finds many lurking-places among the ruined buildings of the ancient Chersonesus Taurica, or Crimea, laid waste in the last Turkish war. It is a curious fact, that animal oil counteracts the venom of the spider tribes, as vegetable oils do the venom of serpents. I suspect, however, that either of them would counteract both poisons; indeed, I think we have a proof of animal oil acting wonderfully on serpents, in the anecdote related by Bruce, when the deadly cerastes, or viper of the Nile, turned away its head from the oily breast of the prime minister of Fenaar, when he carelessly took it up in his hand, and applied it to his naked bosom, to show Mr. Bruce how innocent it was to men of his colour, whose very skin sickened the animal, and made it avoid all contact.”
[173] The same physician, in the very letter quoted by Dr. Seaman, says that all the times this fever had appeared in Carolina, the origin of it was evidently traced to some vessel arrived from the West Indies.
[174] Arguments of this kind involve us in an endless dispute similar to that relative to the equivocal generation of plants and animals; that is, the production of plants without a seed, and animals without parents. As some diseases are confessed to arise from some kind of seed, we are puzzled to account for the origin of the first disease of that kind. Nevertheless, as these diseases do exist, the difficulty arising from a consideration of their origin is overlooked. In the yellow fever, which is not of so long standing, the origin is more disputed. But it is likewise undeniable, that some contagious distempers (the itch particularly) though capable of being propagated by contagion, may yet arise from want of cleanliness, and living on particular kinds of food. May not this also be the case with the yellow fever? And is it not the safe and rational way to act as though it might not only be produced at home, but imported from abroad?
[175] This is the very point in question; but our author, instead of enumerating the facts by which his position may be supported, refers to Dr. Lind, whose evidence shall be afterwards considered.
[176] No greater latitude, or very little more, is required by the advocates for the contagious nature of the yellow fever than Dr. Seaman must allow in a distemper which he himself owns to be contagious. It is well known, on the eastern continent at least, that a gonorrhœa will come on at any time between the first and fifteenth day after the infection is received. Dr. Guthrie supposes the time intervening between the reception of pestilential contagion and the appearance of the symptoms to be four days; and Dr. Chisholm thinks that in the Boullam fever it is somewhat short of two days: but it is plain that much must depend on the quantity of contagion, and the predisposition of the body to receive it.
[178] Sketch of a Plan to exterminate Casual Small Pox.
[180] Dr. Seaman, having at last, as he thinks, completely overthrown his adversaries, and ranked himself with the more considerate and reasonable part of the community, likens those who differ from him to such as believe in the power of imagination to mark the child in the womb; and which he is of opinion that the women of America would not disbelieve, though all the physicians on the continent were to unite in persuading them to the contrary. On this subject the writer of this treatise is happy at having it in his power to declare himself of the same opinion with the ladies, and to offer, in support of their opinion and his, the following fact. A pregnant woman, having been employed in dyeing some cotton yarn, and rinsed it, after it had got the colour, in cold water, threw it, while wet and cold, about her neck. It touched the skin on the back part of the neck, and part of her arm. The woman started, shivered, and instantly said that her child would be marked. It happened exactly according to her prediction. The back part of the neck, and corresponding part of the arm to that which the cotton touched, being covered with purple spots in the child, exactly similar to what might have been made by drops of the purple liquid in which the yarn was dyed falling upon the skin. Of this fact I am as certain as of my own existence; having been present when the cotton was dyed, having heard the woman call out as above related, and seen the child after it was born, and particularly inspected the marks.