Let not the reader be offended at my attempts to reason. I am aware of the evils which the weak and perverted exercise of this power of the mind has introduced into medicine. But let us act with the same consistency upon this subject that we do in other things.
We do not consign a child to its cradle for life, because it falls in its first unsuccessful efforts to use its legs. In like manner we must not abandon reason, because, in our first efforts to use it, we have been deceived. A single just principle in our science will lead to more truth, in one year, than whole volumes of uncombined facts will do in a century.
I lost but two patients in this epidemic in whom the mercury excited a salivation. One of them died from the want of nursing; the other by the late application of the remedy.
It was said a practitioner, who was opposed to bleeding and mercury, cured this fever by means of strong emetics. I gave one to a man who refused to be bled. It operated freely, and brought on a plentiful sweat. The next day he arose from his bed, and went to his work. On the fourth day he sent for me again. My son visited him, and found him without a pulse. He died the next day.
I heard of two other persons who took emetics in the beginning of the fever, without the advice of a physician, both of whom died.
Dr. Pinckard informed me, that their effects were generally hurtful in the violent grades of the yellow fever in the West-Indies. The same information has since been given to me by Dr. Jackson. In the second and third grades of the bilious fever they appear not only to be safe, but useful.
The advantages of a weak vegetable diet were very great in this fever. I found but little difficulty, in most cases, in having my prohibition of animal food complied with before the crisis of the fever, but there was often such a sudden excitement of the appetite for it, immediately afterwards, that it was difficult to restrain it. I have mentioned the case of a young man, who was upon the recovery, who died in consequence of supping upon beef-stakes. Many other instances of the mortality of this fever from a similar cause, I believe, occurred in our epidemic, which were concealed from our physicians. I am not singular in ascribing the death of convalescents to the too early use of animal food. Dr. Poissonnier has the following important remark upon this subject. "The physicians of Brest have observed, that the relapses in the malignant fever, which prevailed in their naval hospitals, were as much the effect of a fault in the diet of the sick as of the contagious air to which they were exposed, and that as many patients perished from this cause as from the original fever. For this reason light soups, with leguminous vegetables in them, panada, rice seasoned with cinnamon, fresh eggs, &c. are all that they should be permitted to eat. The use of flesh should be forbidden for many days after the entire cure of the disorder[3]."