This minister-scientist-physician wrote an account of his treatment of a case of hydrophobia resulting from the bite of a rabid dog. With its accomplished style, Clayton's account of his treatment of hydrophobia is worthy of attention as an example of contemporary theory and practice of the more learned kind. He wrote: It was a relapse of its former distemper, that is, of the bite of the mad-dog. I told them, if any thing in the world would save his life, I judged it might be the former vomit of volatile salts; they could not tell what to do, nevertheless such is the malignancy of the world, that as soon as it was given, they ran away and left me, saying, he was now certainly a dead man, to have a vomit given in that condition. Nevertheless it pleased God that he shortly after cried, _this fellow in the black has done me good_, and after the first vomit, came so to himself, as to know us all. Subsequently, Clayton "vomited him" every other day and made him take volatile salt of amber between vomitings. The patient also drank "posset-drink" with "sage and rue," and washed his hands and sores in a strong salt brine. Cured by the "fellow in the black," the patient had no relapse. Clayton reveals more of his medical theory in another passage from his writings. He observed: In September the weather usually breaks suddenly, and there falls generally very considerable rains. When the weather breaks many fall sick, this being the time of an endemical sickness, for seasonings, cachexes, fluxes, scorbutical dropsies, gripes, or the like which I have attributed to this reason. That by the extraordinary heat, the ferment of the blood being raised too high, and the tone of the stomach relaxed, when the weather breaks the blood palls, and like overfermented liquors is depauperated, or turns eager and sharp, and there's a crude digestion, whence the name distempers may be supposed to ensue. In this passage Clayton's medical theory resembles closely the orthodox medical beliefs of the century. The great English practitioner Sydenham, for example, emphasized the relationship between the weather and disease. Also the analogy between the behavior of blood and wine was then conventional, and the supposed connection between the "sour" blood and indigestion with the resulting acid humors is in accord with Galenism. The remedy--and a most logical one--was medicine to combat the acidity and to restore the tone or balance to the stomach. Acid stomach has a long history.