2. By similar appearances, with those which have been ascribed to putrefaction, having been produced by lightning, by violent emotions of the mind, by extreme pain, and by every thing else which induces sudden and universal disorganization in the fluids and solids of the body. The following facts clearly prove that the symptoms which have been supposed to designate a putrid fever, are wholly the effect of mechanical action in the blood-vessels, and are unconnected with the introduction of a putrid ferment in the blood. Hippocrates relates the case of a certain Antiphillus, in whom a putrid bilious fever (as he calls it) was brought on by the application of a caustic to a wound[6]. [6] Epidemics, book iv. An acute pain in the eye, Dr. Physick informed me, produced the symptoms of what is called a putrid fever, which terminated in death in five days, in St. George's hospital, in the year 1789. Dr. Baynard relates, upon the authority of a colonel Bampfield, that a stag, which he had chased for some time, stopped at a brook of water in order to drink. Soon afterwards it fell and expired. The colonel cut its throat, and was surprised to perceive the blood which issued from it had a putrid and offensive smell[7]. Dr. Desportes takes notice that a fish, which he calls a sucker, affected the system nearly in the same manner as the miasmata of the yellow fever. A distressing vomiting, a coldness of the extremities, and an absence of pulse, were some of the symptoms produced by it, and an inflammation and mortification of the stomach and bowels, were discovered after death to be the effects of its violent operation. Even opium, in large doses, sometimes produces by its powerful stimulus the same symptoms which are produced by the stimulus of marsh miasmata. These symptoms are a slow pulse, coma, a vomiting, cold sweats, a sallow colour of the face, and a suppression of the discharges by the urinary passages and bowels. Error is often perpetuated by words. A belief in the putrefaction of the blood has done great mischief in medicine. The evil is kept up, under the influence of new theories, by the epithet putrid, which is still applied to fever in all our medical books. For which reason I shall reject it altogether hereafter, and substitute in its room. [7] Treatise on the Cold Bath. 2. The _gangrenous_ state of fever; for what appear to some physicians to be signs of putrefaction, are nothing but the issue of a violent inflammation left in the hands of nature, or accelerated by stimulating medicines. Thus the sun, when viewed at mid-day, appears to the naked eye, from the excess of its splendour, to be a mass of darkness, instead of an orb of light.