attendants walked
across the chamber. Soon after he was seized with a violent convulsion,
in which he expired.

To adduce a case which terminated fatally as a proof of the efficacy of
any medicine, recommended to the attention of the public, may perhaps
appear singular; but cannot be deemed absurd, when that remedy answered
the purposes for which it was intended. For in the instance before us;
fixed air was employed, not with an expectation that it would cure the
fever, but to obviate the symptoms of putrefaction, and to allay the
uneasy irritation in the bowels. The disease was too malignant, the
nervous system too violently affected, and the strength of the patient
too much exhausted by the discharges of blood which he suffered, to
afford hopes of recovery from the use of the most powerful antiseptics.

But in the succeeding case the event proved more fortunate.

Elizabeth Grundy, aged seventeen, was attacked on the 10th of December
1772, with the usual symptoms of a continued fever. The common method of
cure was pursued; but the disease increased, and soon assumed a putrid
type.

On the 23d I found her in a constant delirium, with a _subsultus
tendinum_. Her skin was hot and dry, her tongue black, her thirst
immoderate, and her stools frequent, extremely offensive, and for the
most part involuntary. Her pulse beat 130 strokes in a minute; she dosed
much; and was very deaf. I directed wine to be administered freely; a
blister to be applied to her back; the _pediluvium_ to be used several
times in the day; and mephitic air to be injected under the form of a
clyster every two hours. The next day her stools were less frequent, had
lost their foetor, and were no longer discharged involuntarily; her
pulse was reduced to 110 strokes in the minute; and her delirium was
much abated. Directions were given to repeat the clysters, and to supply
the patient liberally with wine. These means were assiduously pursued
several days; and the young woman was so recruited by the 28th, that the
injections were discontinued. She was now quite rational, and not averse
to medicine. A decoction of Peruvian bark was therefore prescribed, by
the use of which she speedily recovered her health.

I might add a third history of a putrid disease, in which the mephitic
air is now under trial, and which affords the strongest proof both of
the _antiseptic_, and of the _tonic_ powers of this remedy; but as the
issue of the case remains yet undeter