He was, moreover, a Joab in the contest with the disease. Philadelphia must long deplore the premature death of this excellent physician. Had he lived a few years longer, he would have filled an immense space in the republic of medicine[102]. It was my affliction to see my friend Dr. John Morris breathe his last, and to hear the first effusions of the most pathetic grief from his mother, as she bursted from the room in which he died. But I had distress from the sickness, as well as the deaths of my brethren in physic. My worthy friends, Dr. Griffitts, Dr. Say, and Dr. Mease, were suspended by a thread over the grave, nearly at the same time. Heaven, in mercy to me, as well as in kindness to the public and their friends, preserved their lives. Had they died, the measure of my sorrows would have been complete. [102] Before he finished his studies in medicine, he published a volume of ingenious and patriotic "Chemical and Economical Essays, designed to illustrate the connection between the theory and practice of chemistry, and the application of that science to some of the arts and manufactures of the United States of America." I have said before, that I early left off drinking wine; but I used it in another way. I carried a little of it in a vial in my pocket, and when I felt myself fainty, after coming out of a sick room, or after a long ride, I kept about a table spoonful of it in my mouth for half a minute, or longer, without swallowing it. So weak and excitable was my system, that this small quantity of wine refreshed and invigorated me as much as half a pint would have done at any other time. The only difference was, that the vigour I derived from the wine in the former, was of shorter duration than when taken in the latter way. For the first two weeks after I visited patients in the yellow fever, I carried a rag wetted with vinegar, and smelled it occasionally in sick rooms: but after I saw and felt the signs of the universal presence of miasmata in my system, I laid aside this and all other precautions. I rested myself on the bed-side of my patients, and I drank milk or ate fruit in their sick rooms. Besides being saturated with miasmata, I had another security against being infected in sick rooms, and that was, I went into scarcely a house which was more infected than my own. Many of the poor people, who called upon me for advice, were bled by my pupils in my shop, and in the yard, which was between it and the street. From the want of a sufficient number of bowls to receive their blood, it was sometimes suffered to flow and putrify upon the ground. From this source, streams of miasmata were constantly poured into my house, and conveyed into my body by the air, during every hour of the day and night.