[160]. See Sir Gilbert Blane’s Medical Logic, Edit. 2, page 190.
[161]. The cutaneous discharge is very materially modified by the state of the atmosphere, in its relations to moisture and dryness: when the air contains much moisture it is a bad conductor of the perspirable matter, which therefore, instead of being carried off in an insensible form, is condensed upon the surface; hence we appear to perspire greatly upon the slightest exercise, whereas the cuticular discharge is at such times absolutely less. We have all experienced the sensation of heat, and disposition to sweating, during the moist weather which so frequently occurs in this country in April and May, the wind being at the time stationary at south-west or south. On the contrary, during the prevalence of an east wind, the most violent exercise will scarcely prove diaphoretic, and yet the quantity of cutaneous exhalation is far greater than during that state of atmosphere when the slightest exercise deluges us with perspirable matter.
[162]. Lommius de Febribus.
[163]. De Medicina. Lib. iii. c. 7.
[164]. This practice is still cherished by the vulgar, especially in some of the more remote districts of the kingdom. It is with this view that the Cornish nurse continues to keep down the excess of population, by administering Gin and Treacle, in her smoky chimney corner, to children labouring under measles, in order to throw out the eruption.
[165]. M. Du Hamel has recorded the cases of two countrymen, considerably advanced in life, who were cured of Dropsy by remaining for some time in a baker’s oven, soon after the bread had been drawn. Varikbillan, ninth Caliph of the race of the Abassides, is said to have been cured by a nearly similar method. His physician caused him to enter a lime-kiln soon after the lime had been removed, when in the course of a few days he was totally cured of his dropsy. The ancients excited sweating in this disease, by burying the patient up to the neck in heated sand or ashes (Celsus, Lib. iii. c. 30.), and Lysons cured cases by placing his patients in rooms heated to a very high temperature.
In the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences, for 1703, a case is related of a woman, who, tired out by the protracted Dropsy under which her husband laboured, charitably administered to him a very large dose of opium, with the intention of despatching him, but the medicine immediately produced such a copious sweat that it restored him to health!
[166]. σιαλος, saliva; et αγω, excito.
[167]. I of course except its application in the form of vapour, in which state it proves extremely active. See Hydrargyrum.
[168]. Medical Logic, Edit. 2. p. 75.