is not
always affected with torpor, and as there is a direct sympathy between the
stomach and heart, some people have believed, that nauseating doses of some
emetic drug, as of antimonium tartarizatum, have been administered with
advantage, abating by direct sympathy the actions of the heart. This theory
is not ill founded, and the use of digitalis, given in small doses, as from
half a dram to a dram of the saturated tincture, two or three times a day,
as well as other less violent emetic drugs, would be worth the attention of
hospital physicians.

Sickness might also be produced probably with advantage by whirling the
patient in a chair suspended from the cieling by two parallel cords; which
after being revolved fifty or one hundred times in one direction, would
return with great circular velocity, and produce vertigo, similar I suppose
to sea-sickness. And lastly the sickness produced by respiring an
atmosphere mixed with one tenth of carbonated hydrogen, discovered by Mr.
Watt, and published by Dr. Beddoes, would be well worthy exact and repeated
experiment.

4. Cool air, cool fomentations, or ablutions, are also useful in this
inflammatory fever; as by cooling the particles of blood in the cutaneous
and pulmonary vessels, they must return to the heart with less stimulus,
than when they are heated above the natural degree of ninety-eight. For
this purpose snow and ice have been scattered on the patients in Italy; and
cold bathing has been used at the eruption of the small pox in China, and
both, it is said, with advantage. See Class III. 2. 1. 12. and Suppl. I. 8.

5. The lancet however with repeated mild cathartics is the great agent in
destroying this enormous excitement of the system, so long as the strength
of the patient will admit of evacuations. Blisters over the painful part,
where the phlegmon or topical inflammation is situated, after great
evacuation, is of evident service, as in pleurisy. Warm bathing for half an
hour twice a day, when the patient becomes enfeebled, is of great benefit,
as in peripneumony and rheumatism.

6. When other means fail of success in abating the violent excitement of
the system in inflammatory diseases, might not the shaved head be covered
with large bladders of cold water, in which ice or salt had been recently
dissolved; and changed as often as necessary, till the brain is rendered in
some degree torpid by cold?--Might not a greater degree of cold, as iced
water, or snow, b