In a publication, dated the 16th of September, I recommended a diet of milk and vegetables, and cooling purges to be taken once or twice a week, to the citizens of Philadelphia. This advice was the result of the theory of the disease I had adopted, and of the successful practice which had arisen from it. In my intercourse with my fellow-citizens, I advised this regimen to be regulated by the degrees of fatigue and foul air to which they were exposed. I likewise advised moderate blood-letting to all such persons as were of a plethoric habit. To men whose minds were influenced by the publications in favour of bark and wine, and who were unable at that time to grasp the extent and force of the remote cause of this terrible fever, the idea of dieting, purging, or bleeding the inhabitants of a whole village or city appeared to be extravagant and absurd: but I had not only the analogy of the regimen made use of to prepare the body for the small-pox, but many precedents in favour of the advice. Dr. Haller has given extracts from the histories of two plagues, in which the action of the miasmata was prevented or mitigated by bleeding[89]. Dr. Hodges confirms the utility of the same practice. The benefits of low diet, as a preventive of the plague, were established by many authors, long before they received the testimony of the benevolent Mr. Howard in their favour. Socrates in Athens, and Justinian in Constantinople, were preserved, by means of their abstemious modes of living, from the plagues which occasionally ravaged those cities. By means of the low diet, gentle physic, and occasional bleedings, which I thus publicly recommended, the disease was prevented in many instances, or rendered mild where it was taken. But my efforts to prevent the disease in my fellow-citizens did not end here. I advised them, not only in the public papers, but in my intercourse with them, to avoid heat, cold, labour, and every thing else that could excite the miasmata (which I knew to be present in all their bodies) into action. I forgot, upon this occasion, the usual laws which regulate the intercourse of man with man in the streets, and upon the public roads, in my excursions into the neighbourhood of the city. I cautioned many persons, whom I saw walking or riding in an unsafe manner, of the danger to which they exposed themselves; and thereby, I hope, prevented an attack of the disease in many people. [89] Bibliotheca Medicinæ Practicæ, vol. ii. p. 93. and 387.