I have said that the clergy, the apothecaries, and many other persons who were uninstructed in the principles of medicine, prescribed purging and bleeding with great success in this disease. Necessity gave rise to this undisciplined sect of practitioners, for they came forward to supply the places of the regular bred physicians who were sick or dead. I shall mention the names of a few of those persons who distinguished themselves as volunteers in this new work of humanity. The late Rev. Mr. Fleming, one of the ministers of the catholic church, carried the purging powders in his pocket, and gave them to his poor parishioners with great success. He even became the advocate of the new remedies. In a conversation I had with him, on the 22d of September, he informed me, that he had advised four of our physicians, whom he met a day or two before, "to renounce the pride of science, and to adopt the new mode of practice, for that he had witnessed its good effects in many cases." Mr. John Keihmle, a German apothecary, has assured me, that out of 314 patients whom he visited, and 187 for whom he prescribed from the reports of their friends, he lost but 47 (which is nearly but one in eleven), and that he treated them all agreeably to the method which I had recommended. The Rev. Mr. Schmidt, one of the ministers of the Lutheran church, was cured by him. I have before mentioned an instance of the judgment of Mr. Connelly, and of his zeal in visiting and prescribing for the sick. His remedies were bleeding and purging. He, moreover, bore a constant and useful testimony against bark, wine, laudanum, and the warm bath[96]. Mrs. Paxton, in Carter's-alley, and Mrs. Evans, the wife of Mr. John Evans, in Second-street, were indefatigable; the one in distributing mercurial purges composed by herself, and the other in urging the necessity of _copious_ bleeding and purging among her friends and neighbours, as the only safe remedies for the fever. These worthy women were the means of saving many lives[97]. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, two black men, spent all the intervals of time, in which they were not employed in burying the dead, in visiting the poor who were sick, and in bleeding and purging them, agreeably to the directions which had been printed in all the newspapers. Their success was unparalleled by what is called regular practice. This encomium upon the practice of the blacks will not surprise the reader, when I add that they had no fear of putrefaction in the fluids, nor of the calumnies of a body of fellow-citizens in the republic of medicine to deter them from plentiful purging and bleeding. They had, besides, no more patients than they were able to visit two or three times a day. But great as their success was, it was exceeded by those persons who, in despair of procuring medical aid of any kind, purged and bled themselves. This palm of superior success will not be withheld from those people when I explain the causes of it.