What has been said of Fires is likewise to be understood of firing of Guns, which some have too rashly advised. Says Dr. _Mead_[22], 'The proper Correction of the Air would be to make it fresh and cool.' And here quotes from the Practice of the _Arabians_ out of _Rhazes de re Medica_, &c. Dr. _Quincey_[23] 'That as the Air being still and as it were stagnate at such Times, and as it favours the Collection of poisonous Effluvia, and aggravates Infection, thinks it more effectual to let off small Parcels of the common _Pulvis Fulminans_, which must afford a greater Shock to the Air by its Explosion than by the largest Pieces of Ordnance.' In favour of which last Assertion, the Experience both of Soldiers, will justifie the firing of great Guns and Ordnance, which is frequently used in Camps, for the Dissipation of the collected pestilential Atoms, which by Concussion as well as its constituent Parts of Nitre and Sulphur, tend greatly to the Purification of the grosser Atmosphere within the Compass of their Activity; and by the Seamen in their Voyages in the Southern Parts of the World, when sometimes the Air is so gross, and hangs so low upon them, as to be almost suffocated. And in the late Plague at _Marseilles_ the constant firing of great Guns at Morning and Evening, by the Appointment of _Monsieur le Marquis de Langeron_ their Governour, was esteemed of great Relief to the Inhabitants. Nay, their Contest will not end in a Pipe of Tobacco, against which Dr. _Hodges_[24] declares himself a profess'd Enemy: 'But whether (says he) we regard the narcotick Quality of this _American_ Henbane; or the poisonous Oil which exhales from it in Smoaking, or that prodigious Discharge of Spittle which it occasions, and which Nature wants for many other important Occasions, besides the Aptitude of the pestilential Poison to be taken down along with it; he chose rather to supply its Place with Sack.' Dr. _Bradley_[25] redeems it from this low Character, and represents it as a great Antidote in the last Plague _Anno_ 1665. 'The Distemper did not reach those who smoak'd Tobacco every Day, but particularly it was judged best to smoak in a Morning: He farther gives you an Account of a famous Physician, who in the pestilential Time took every Morning a Cordial to guard his Stomach, and after that a Pipe or two, before he went to visit his Patients; at the same time he had an Issue in his Arm, by which, when it begun to smart, he knew he had received some Infection (as he says) and then had recourse to his Cordial and his Pipe.' By this Means only he preserved himself, as several others did at that Time by the same Method.