This plainly appears from the pamphlet of a physician in great practice at Ghent, Tertius Damianus, from Vissenaecken, near Tirlemont[672], whose own wife fell sick of the sweating fever, and fortunately was again restored[673]. The cases whereof Damianus gives an account, are among the most marked of which any mention is made, and it also seems, that the disease, contrary to the opinion of many, arose from fear alone, and manifested in the Netherlands a much greater power of contagion than in Germany, to which the hot treatment may have contributed[674]. The manner in which Damianus restrained his patients from indulging in their propensity to sleep, is worthy of notice. When the usual means failed, he directed that their hair should be torn out, that their limbs should be tied together in painful positions, and that vinegar should be dropped into their eyes[675]: the danger justified these means, but violence does not easily attain its end. For the rest, the views of this physician do not differ from those commonly entertained, and if he complains[676] of the great extortions of the apothecaries, this was a natural effect of the customary prescriptions, whereof he himself recommends many that are very objectionable. Whatever the science of medicine of the sixteenth century could oppose to so fearful an enemy, is set forth in the very excellent treatise of _Joachim Schiller_[677] of Freiburg, which, however, did not appear until two years later, and unfortunately does not give the wished-for information on the development of the pestilence in the Briesgau. Schiller is moderate in his views, and shews throughout, that he is a very well informed physician, and well versed in Greek literature: and although he cannot steer clear of the rubbish of clumsy remedies, yet the fault should not be charged on him, but on the age in which he lived. This, like every other, had its evils, and enveloped in clouds and darkness the genius of medicine, which, free, great, and elevated above human short-sightedness, is respected only by the intellectual servants of nature. SECT. 12.—FORM OF THE DISEASE. The notions of contemporary writers respecting the phenomena and the course of the sweating epidemic are, it is true, individually unsatisfactory and defective[678]; yet collectively, we may gather from them a lively and complete picture of its effect on the human frame; especially from the German observers, who reported truly and honestly their own, as well as the general experience of their age; for the English had up to that period described little more than the external appearances of this epidemic, which had already attacked them for the fourth time.