"Relying on this foundation, I endeavoured to relieve such as required my assistance by the following method: if the cough had not yet caused a fever, and other symptoms, which, as we said, usually accompany it, I judged it sufficient to forbid the use of flesh meats, and all kinds of spirituous liquors, and advised moderate exercise, going into the air, and a draught of cooling pectoral ptisan to be taken between"whiles. These few things sufficed to relieve the cough; and prevent the fever, and other symptoms usually attending it. For as by abstaining from flesh and spirituous liquors, along with the use of cooling medicines, the blood was so cooled as not easily to admit of a febrile impression, so by the use of exercise those hot effluvia of the blood, which strike in, and occasion a cough as often as the pores are stopped by sudden cold, are commodiously exhaled in the natural and true way, to the relief of the patient.

"With respect to quieting the cough, it is to be observed that opiates, spirituous liquors, and heating medicines used for this purpose, are equally unsafe; for, the matter of the cough being entangled and stiffened thereby, those vapours which should pass off from the blood, in a gentle and gradual manner, by coughing, are retained in the mass, and raise a fever: and this frequently proves very fatal to abundance of the common people, who, whilst they unadvisedly endeavour to check the cough, by taking burnt brandy, and other hot liquors, occasion pleuritic or peripneumonic disorders; and by this irrational procedure render this disease dangerous; and often mortal, which of its own nature is, slight, and easily curable. Neither do they err less,' though they seem to act more reasonably, who endeavour to remove the cause of the disease by raising sweat; for though we do not deny that spontaneous sweats frequently prove more effectual than all other helps in expelling the morbific cause, yet it is apparent that whilst we attempt to force sweat we inflame the blood, and may possibly destroy the patient, whom we desire to cure.

"But it happens sometimes, not only when the disease has been unskilfully treated, in the manner above described, but also spontaneously, at the beginning of the illness, or in a day or two afterwards, especially in tender and weakly persons, that the cough is succeeded by alternate intervals of heat and cold, a pain in the head, back, and limbs, and sometimes a tendency to sweat, especially in the night; all which symptoms generally followed the fever of this constitution, as it were, of the lungs, which occasioned a difficulty of breathing, stopped the cough, and increased the fever.

"According to the best observation I could make, the fever and its most dangerous symptoms were best relieved by bleeding in the arm, applying a blister to the neck, and giving a clyster every day. In the mean time, I advised the patient to sit up some hours every day, to forbear flesh meats, and sometimes to drink small beer, sometimes milk and water, and sometimes a cooling and lenient ptisan. If the pain of the side abated not in two or three days, but continued very violent,

I bled a second time, and advised the continuance of the clysters. But with respect to clysters, it must be carefully observed, either in this or other fevers, that they are not to be long and frequently used when the disease is in its decline; especially in hysteric women, and in men that are subject to the hypochondriac disease; for the blood and juices of such persons are easily changed, and soon agitated and heated; whence the animal economy is disturbed, and the febrile symptoms continued beyond the usual time.

"But to return to our subject: whilst by these means we allowed lime, that the blood might gradually free itself from those hot particles that were lodged in the pleura and lungs, all the symptoms usually went off in a geiitlc manner; whereas, when the disease was treated in a rough way, by giving abundance of remedies, it either destroyed the patient, or rendered it necessary to repent bleeding oftener than the disease required, or would safely bear, in order to save life. For though repeated bleeding answers every purpose in the true pleurisy, and is alone sufficient for the cure thereof, provided there be no hindrance from a hot regimen and heating medicines; yet, here, on the contrary, it sufficed, to bleed once, or at most twice, in case the patient refrained from bed, and drank cooling liquors. And I never found it necessary to bleed more frequently, unless the symptoms relating to the pleura and lungs were much increased by some adventitious heat, and even in this case the practice .was not wholly void of danger.

"Upon this occasion, I shall briefly deliver my sentiments with respect to a very trite and common opinion, viz. that a pleurisy is found to be of so malignant a nature in some years that it will not then bear bleeding, at least not so often as this distemper ordinarily demands. Now, though I conceive that a true and essential pleurisy, which, as shall hereafter be observed, happens indifferently in all constitutions, does in all years equally indicate repeated bleeding; yet it sometimes happens that the peculiar epidemic fever of the year, from sudden alteration of the manifest qualities of the air, readily throws off the morbid matter upon the pleura and lungs, while the fever notwithstanding continues exactly the same. Wherefore, in this case, though bleeding may be used to abate this symptom when it is very violent, yet generally speaking, little more blood ought to be taken away than is required by the fever whereon this symptom depends; for, if the fever be of a kind that will bear frequent bleeding, it may likewise be repealed in the pleurisy, which is a symptom thereof: but if the fever will not bear repeated bleeding, it will be prejudicial in the pleurisy, which will go off with, or last as long as the fever does. And in my judgment this was the case in the symptomatic pleurisy that accompanied the fever which prevailed here at the time the cough began, namely, in winter, 1675; and therefore I must observe, that whoever, in the cure of fevers, hath not always in view the constitution of the year, inasmuch as it tends to produce some particular epidemic disease, and likewise to reduce all the contemporary diseases to its form and likeness, proceeds in an uncertain and fallacious way.