A letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart. concerning the virtues of the muriatic acid, or spirit of sea-salt, in the cure of putrid diseases / by Sir William Fordyce.

Date:
1790
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart. concerning the virtues of the muriatic acid, or spirit of sea-salt, in the cure of putrid diseases / by Sir William Fordyce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ation concerning malignant difeafes, themoft to be dreaded, and the moft difficult to cure. Excepting the boils and emerods recorded in the Old Teftament, I have not met with an account of any diflemper that could with propriety be termed peftilential before the age of Hippocrates, the father of phy- fic i who defcribes an endemic to which he gives that name, and in which he mentions a variety of fymptoms nearly allied to thofe of putrid difeafes in our time, but not fpe- cifically charadteriftic of the Peftilence, Nor does the Plague of Athens, as reprefented by Thucydides, who was himfelf infeded by it, and whofe narrative is the beft I havQ found in any ancient author, fufficiently refemble the Plague of London, Marfeilles, or Mofcow, to juflify a comparifon between them. In fhort, no hiftory of the fymptoms pr cure of th^ Peft, in the true fenfe of that \vprd, has been tranfmitted to us, as far as I can i