[195] If this be chiefly composed of fixed air and azote, as has been said in p. 146, it is difficult to see how putrefaction can take place in it.
[196] It is not easy to understand this. Nitre cannot deflagrate or burn, unless it be mixed with charcoal, sulphur, or some inflammable substance. The iron heater could only expel the water, with a small proportion of acid.
[197] Perhaps this vapour may be as efficacious as the other in destroying contagion, but its smell is so extremely offensive and disagreeable to the lungs, that on this account nitrous vapour seems much preferable.
[198] Medicina Nautica, p. 229.
[199] Willich, p. 13.
[200] Dr. Rush pathetically laments the loss of Dr. Nicholas Way, who had been his intimate friend. In a poem called the Political Greenhouse we find some account of the death of Drs. Smith, Cooper and Scandella, who also perished; and the fates of Drs. Smith and Scandella were connected with one another. Dr. Cooper of Philadelphia was seized with the disease in that city. A friend who attended him sickened during his attendance, and Dr. Cooper, before he had thoroughly recovered, attended in his turn the friend who had taken care of him. A relapse ensued, and the Doctor died. Dr. Smith was intimate with Dr. Scandella of Venice, who had come from thence to America, and was at New York during the time of the fever in 1798. Intending to return to Europe, he waited there for the English packet boat; but, being informed that a foreign lady in Philadelphia, for whose daughter he had an attachment, was sick of the yellow fever, he returned to that city; but could not save either mother or daughter from the cruel disease. On Scandella’s coming to New York the second time he could find no body that would receive him as a lodger. In this forlorn situation he wrote to Dr. Smith, who instantly gave him an invitation to his house. Here he was seized with the fever, and was attended by Dr. Smith, until the latter also fell sick. A friend who lived in the house attended first Dr. Scandella, and then Dr. Smith, until both died.
[201] Typhus Icteroides.
[202] The Doctor’s letter is dated December, 1797.
[203] Lind on hot climates.
[204] Memoirs of Yellow Fever, p. 137.