Phenomena of an opposite character, on the contrary, afforded hope of recovery. The best physicians were agreed on the importance of the petechiæ as an indication of the nature of the crisis; for those cases in which they were abundant and of a good quality were cured much more easily than those in which the eruption was suppressed. An abundant perspiration also was particularly conducive to recovery, whereas all other evacuations, especially a flux from the bowels, proved to be injurious and even fatal. If we keep these phenomena in view, and consider, moreover, that in the widely extending lues venerea of those times cutaneous eruptions predominated over the other symptoms, the English sweating sickness in the north of Europe will appear, as in connexion with this circumstance, of a very important character; and the supposition, that the morbid activity of the system during the whole of this age, maintained a decided determination to the skin, may thence be fairly considered as something more than a mere conjecture. This fact speaks for itself, but the causes of this altered temperament of the body it is not an easy matter to discover. Fracastoro, who knew much better than his modern followers how to manage his sagacious doctrine of contagion, looked for these causes in the quality of the air, which was manifest by much more evident phenomena in the epidemic petechial fever of 1528 than in that of 1505, and he traced an active connexion between this quality, which he called “infection of the atmosphere,”[420] and the condition of the blood; thus indicating unknown influences by an obscure notion. He considered the altered quality of the blood according to the established views of that period, which the petechial spotted fever seemed clearly to confirm, as a putrefaction; and he even assumed that, in the non-epidemic petechial fevers, which, from the year 1505 forward, frequently occurred, isolated causes must have given rise to changes in the blood, as well as that quality of the air, to which this great physician attributed the general and continued alterations which take place in the nature of diseases. The petechial fever made the same impression on the physicians of Italy as new disorders have ever made; for although they were the best in Europe, their view was bounded by the horizon of Galen, within the limits of which the novel phenomenon was not to be found. They were therefore soon perplexed, and whilst they sought to entrammel the dreaded enemy with scholastic doctrines of repletion and acrimony and occult qualities, and betook themselves first to one remedy and then to another, they exposed themselves to the derision of the people, who soon perceived their disagreement and indecision, and, as usual, charged on the whole medical profession the well merited blame of individuals[421]. SECT. 6.—OTHER DISEASES.