To correspond in quantity with the discharge from the skin, blood-letting in the plague, when indicated, should be copious. A profuse sweat, continued for twenty-four hours, cannot fail of wasting many pounds of the fluids of the body. This was the duration of the critical sweats in the famous plague which was known by the name of the English sweating sickness, and which made its appearance in the army of Henry VII. in Milford-Haven in Wales, and spread from thence through every part of the kingdom. The principles which lead to the prevention and cure of the yellow fever and the plague, apply with equal force to the mitigation of the measles, and to the prevention or mitigation of the scarlatina anginosa, the dysentery, and the inflammatory jail fever. I have remarked elsewhere[98], that a previous vegetable diet lessened the violence and danger of the measles. Dr. Sims taught me, many years ago, to prevent or mitigate the scarlatina anginosa, by means of gentle purges, after children are infected by it[99]. Purges of salts have in many instances preserved whole families and neighbourhoods from the dysentery, where they have been exposed to its remote cause. During the late American war, an emetic seldom failed of preventing an attack of the hospital fever, when given in its forming state[100]. I have had no experience of the effects of previous evacuations in abating the violence, or preventing the mortality of the malignant sore throat, but I can have no doubt of their efficacy, from the sameness of the state of the system in that disease, as in other malignant fevers. The debility induced in it is from depression, and the supposed symptoms of putrefaction are nothing but the disguised effects of a sudden and violent pressure of an inflammatory stimulus upon the arterial system. [98] Vol. ii. [99] Medical Memoirs, vol. i. [100] Vol. i. With these observations I close the history of the rise, progress, symptoms, and treatment of the bilious remitting yellow fever, which appeared in Philadelphia in the year 1793. My principal aim has been to revive and apply to it the principles and practice of Dr. Sydenham, and, however coldly those principles and that practice may be received by some physicians of the present day, I am convinced that experience, in all ages and in all countries, will vouch for their truth and utility. A NARRATIVE OF THE _STATE OF THE BODY AND MIND_ OF THE AUTHOR, DURING THE PREVALENCE OF THE FEVER.