In answer to these facts we are told, that Mr. Hamilton and his family were cured by Dr. Stevens's remedies, and that Dr. Kuhn had administered them with success in several instances. Upon these cures I shall insert the following judicious remarks from Dr. Sydenham. "Success (says the doctor) is not a sufficient proof of the excellency of a method of cure in acute diseases, since some are recovered by the imprudent procedure of old women; but it is further required, that the distemper should be _easily cured_, and yield conformably to its _own_ nature[93]." And again, speaking of the cure of the new fever of 1685, this incomparable physician observes, "If it be objected that this fever frequently yields to a quite contrary method to that which I have laid down, I answer, that the cure of a disease by a method which is attended with success only _now_ and _then_, in a _few_ instances, differs extremely from that practical method, the efficacy whereof appears both from its recovering _greater numbers_, and all the practical phenomena happening in the cure[94]." [93] Vol. ii. p. 254. [94] Vol, ii. p. 354. Far be it from me to deny that the depression of the system may not be overcome by such stimuli as are more powerful than those which occasion it. This has sometimes been demonstrated by the efficacy of bark, wine, and laudanum, in the confluent and petechial small-pox; but even this state of that disease yields more easily to blood-letting, or to plentiful evacuations from the stomach and bowels, on the first or second day of the eruptive fever. This I have often proved, by giving a large dose of tartar emetic and calomel, as soon as I was satisfied from circumstances, that my patient was infected with the small-pox. But the depression produced by the yellow fever appears to be much greater than that which occurs in the small-pox, and hence it more uniformly resisted the most powerful tonic remedies.