Next day, though his pulse was almost imperceptible, and his extremities cold, “the medicines were continued as far as circumstances would admit;” with what view it is not said, nor indeed is it easy to be discovered. At one in the morning, however, the patient died; an event not at all surprising. Our authors excuse themselves for this failure by saying that the viscera of the patient were diseased, as was evinced by the impossibility of exciting a salivation; and “that when a patient is evidently incurable by the common practice, it becomes the duty of the practitioner to depart from it.” No doubt we may readily assent to both these assertions; but though a patient be evidently incurable by the common practice, or by any other, there is no necessity for killing him, or for persevering in a course of violent medicines that evidently make him worse. The whole of this case indeed strongly militates against the doctrine of excitement; for if mercury be such a powerful stimulus to the powers of life in general, how comes it to pass that in the present case the unhappy patient, instead of being in the smallest degree excited, was prodigiously debilitated, and that from the very first time of taking the medicines. This will appear from the following table, exhibiting the symptoms of the disease as they kept pace with the medicines taken. DAYS OF THE MEDICINES TAKEN. SYMPTOMS. MONTH. _August 29 Ordinary doses of Pain of bowels, & preceding._ mercury and opium. and frequent stools, growing worse. _Sept. 1 & 2._ Opium and mercury, Still increasing. two grains each, every two hours; besides opiate draughts. 3d The opium and Stools very frequent, mercury as before, with violent but now given every pain in the bowels; hour; half an extreme thirst, ounce of mercurial tongue furred, and ointment, with 60 no sleep. grains calomel. 4th Pills as usual. Vomiting during Ointmt. thrice rubbed the night. Tongue in, once with brown and furred. 120 grains of mercury. 5th Medicines as before. Violent pain in bowels. 6th Medicines as before. Extreme pain on pressing the arch of the colon; frequent stools, profuse sweats, great dejection of spirits.