5. Strewing lime over putrid matters. Dr. Dalzelle says, he once checked a bilious fever, by spreading twelve barrels of lime on a piece of marshy ground, from whence the exhalations that produced it were derived[20]. A mixture of quick lime and ashes in water, when thrown into a privy, discharges from it a large quantity of offensive air, and leaves it afterwards without a smell. As this foul air is discharged into the atmosphere, it has been doubted whether the lime and ashes should be used for that purpose, after a malignant fever has made its appearance. [20] Sur les Maladies des Climats Chauds. 6. Mr. Quiton Morveau has lately proposed the muriatic gas as a means of destroying miasmata. However effectual it may be in destroying the volatile and foul excretions which are discharged from the human body in confined situations, as in filthy jails, hospitals, and ships, it is not calculated to oppose the seeds of a disease which exist in the atmosphere, and which are diffused over a large extent of city or country. Mr. Morveau ascribes great virtues to it, in checking the malignant fever in Cadiz, in 1801, but from the time at which it was used, being late in the autumn, there is more reason to believe it had run its ordinary course, or that it was destroyed by cold weather. 7. The explosion of gunpowder has been recommended for checking pestilential diseases. Mr. Quiton Morveau says, it destroys the offensive odour of putrid exhalations, but does not act upon the fevers produced by them. 8. Washing the floors of houses with a solution of alkaline salts in water, has been recommended by Dr. Mitchell, as an antidote to malignant fevers. As yet, I believe, there are no facts which establish the efficacy of the practice, when they are produced by exhalations from decayed vegetable and animal substances in a putrid state. 9. Large fires have sometimes been made in cities, in order to destroy the miasmata of pestilential diseases. They were obviously hurtful in the plague of London, in the year 1665. Dr. Hodges, who relates this fact, says, "Heaven wept for the mistake of kindling them, and mercifully put them out, with showers of rain."