A treatise on malignant fever : with an attempt to prove its non-contagious nature / by Stubbins Ffirth.

  • Ffirth, Stubbins, approximately 1775-1820.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on malignant fever : with an attempt to prove its non-contagious nature / by Stubbins Ffirth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    43/68
    vers the right, and we seldom acquire a new truth except at the expence of an old error. DESCRIPTION OF THE BLACK VOMIT. THE black matter, commonly called vomit by the Americans, is known to the Spaniards by the name of vo- mito prieto, and they have given us several descriptions of it, accompanied by their opinions of its nature, &c. But in general, their ideas thereof are so confused, that little information can be derived from an attentive perusal of them ; for unhappily the sun of science has not dispel- led the clouds of darkness with which their horizon is ob- scured, neither have his rays chased away the ignorance and prejudice in which they are involved : The one is prevented by the chicanery of the monks ; the other by the laws of the sovereign. It is therefore not by the re- condite study of the ancients, or the attentive perusal of the moderns, that we are to acquire a perfect acquaint- ance with black vomit, but from the chamber of disease, from the bed-side of those languishing under one of the most dreadful calamities that ever befel the human race ; where death is making his advances, and where the scythe of time is gathering in a plentiful harvest; where nothing is heard but the mournful tolling of the bell, the noise of the dead cart, and the cry of bring out your dead ; or occasionally the distressing exclamations of relatives, and the awful moans of the delirious and the dying. To continue, I must observe, that when that awful period ar- rives that ushers in this direful symptom, the counte- nance of the patient assumes an aspect that sets at defi- ance all the powers of description; which would baffle