An inquiry into the various sources of the usual forms of summer & autumnal disease in the United States, and the means of preventing them : to which are added, Facts, intended to prove the yellow fever not to be contagious / by Benjamin Rush, M.D.

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the various sources of the usual forms of summer & autumnal disease in the United States, and the means of preventing them : to which are added, Facts, intended to prove the yellow fever not to be contagious / by Benjamin Rush, M.D. 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.)

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    the vital organs from disease, by inviting its remote cause to the external surface of the body. 2. The cold bath, or cold water applied to the external surface of the body. Ulloa, in his travels through Cuba, tells us the Spaniards make it a practice, when partially wetted by the rain, to plunge themselves, with their wet clothes on, into the first stream of water they meet with afterwards, by which means they avoid taking the fever of the island. Where this cannot be conveniently done, the peasants strip off their clothes, and put them under a shelter, and receive showers of rain upon their naked bodies, and thus preserve themselves from the fever. Dr. Baynard has left it upon re- cord, in his treatise upon the cold bath, that those persons who lived in water-mills, also watermen, bargemen, and fishermen, who were employed up- on the river, and in dabbling in cold water, were rarely affected by the plague in London, in 1665, and that but two persons died with it on London bridge. The water carriers at Cairo, Mr. Volney says, uniformly escape the plague ; and Dr. Chis- holm informs us, that those negroes in Demarara who go naked, and are thereby disposed not to avoid showers of rain, are never affected with the Jbyer of that country.