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156

OF THE SCARLET FEVER.

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tion of red prominent points was very copious and evident, so as togive a general roughness and redness to the skin of the breast. Inthat state I found him soon after Mr. Bell had left him; his pulsefrequent and small; his skin but just beginning to grow hot, andhis hands rather cold. He complained of general oppression,uneasiness, and head-ach. The velum pendulum, uvula, and ton-sils, were of a dark purple red ; but there were no ulcers or aphthaeon them that 1 could see. Before six at night, he had much moresevere head-ach and oppression, with nausea, vomiting, and diar-rhoea; his pulse 140 and very s-trong; his skin very hot, and of abright red, with a considerable degree of roughness all over it.

" Conceiving this to be a case of the most imminent danger, andin every respect, proper for your cold practice, I lost no timein getting him taken put of bed, stripped and set erect in atub, in which situation I poured a gardener's watering pan full ofcold water all over him, from head to foot. This relieved him agood deal, and, as you may believe, cooled him very effectually;but before ten at night the symptoms had recurred with more vio-lence than ever. His pulse was 160, and very strong; his faceturgid, his eyes growing red, his skin very red from head to foot,and very hot. 1 did not measure the heat of his skin by the ther-mometer; but I think it must have been at least 104 degrees ofFahrenheit. 1 immediately repeated the cold effusion as before,and with the same good effect. He was immediately cooled and re-freshed, and half an hour after 1 found his pulse 120, and the heatof his shin very moderate. He had a pretty good night; but be-fore eight nexUnorning, was become very hot again; on which ac-count the effusion was repeated in the same manner. He said hedid not like my way of bathing, and would rather be bathed in hisown tub; and as I thought, from the state of the symptoms, thatthere was occasion for it, he was bathed in his tub, and fairly laidunder water, over head and ears, between eleven and twelve atnoon, and again at six in the evening of the second day.

" These five good sousings in twenty-four hours seemed to havedone the business completely. The eruption was not repelled, butthe progress of the local affection in the throat seemed to be stop-ped. I could never see any ulcerations in it, though I lookedcarefully for them, in consequence of having observed muchfcetor of his breath on the second evening. The force of the fevei,as to heat and frequency, and strength of pulse, was quite brokenafter the fifth ducking ; to such a degree even, that I began to havesome fears that the vis vita might fail, and had ac>ually providedwine to be at hand, to give him from time to time in case of need;and I saw him several times during the night, between the second audthird day of his disease. But 1 found no occasion to give him anyof it; nor has he had a grain of medicine, or even a drop of wine,during his illness ; so that you must allow it has been a very fairexperiment of the cold affusion, as a remedy for the scarlet fever.His throat was quite well the morning of the fourth day: thesame day he had some slight swelling of the tand*, but not the

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