ll what to do, nevertheless such is the malignancy of
the world, that as soon as it was given, they ran away and left me,
saying, he was now certainly a dead man, to have a vomit given in
that condition. Nevertheless it pleased God that he shortly after
cried, _this fellow in the black has done me good_, and after the
first vomit, came so to himself, as to know us all.

Subsequently, Clayton "vomited him" every other day and made him take
volatile salt of amber between vomitings. The patient also drank
"posset-drink" with "sage and rue," and washed his hands and sores in a
strong salt brine. Cured by the "fellow in the black," the patient had
no relapse.

Clayton reveals more of his medical theory in another passage from his
writings. He observed:

In September the weather usually breaks suddenly, and there falls
generally very considerable rains. When the weather breaks many
fall sick, this being the time of an endemical sickness, for
seasonings, cachexes, fluxes, scorbutical dropsies, gripes, or the
like which I have attributed to this reason. That by the
extraordinary heat, the ferment of the blood being raised too high,
and the tone of the stomach relaxed, when the weather breaks the
blood palls, and like overfermented liquors is depauperated, or
turns eager and sharp, and there's a crude digestion, whence the
name distempers may be supposed to ensue.

In this passage Clayton's medical theory resembles closely the orthodox
medical beliefs of the century. The great English practitioner
Sydenham, for example, emphasized the relationship between the weather
and disease. Also the analogy between the behavior of blood and wine
was then conventional, and the supposed connection between the "sour"
blood and indigestion with the resulting acid humors is in accord with
Galenism. The remedy--and a most logical one--was medicine to combat
the acidity and to restore the tone or balance to the stomach. Acid
stomach has a long history.

The reasonableness of Clayton's pathology is impressive, but reason did
lead to some bizarre--in the light of present-day medical
knowledge--conclusions. Aware of the value to the scientist of close
observation and of the necessity to reason about these observations,
Clayton was in the finest seventeenth-century scientific tradition.
Observing a lady--for example--suffering from lead poisoning, he noted
that her distress, judging by