Note 56 — Chapter XIII

The Use of Opiates in this Disease undoubtedly requires no Small Consideration, the great Sydenham himself not seeming always sufficiently guarded in the Exhibition of them; as far as Experience since his Day has enabled Physicians to judge of this Matter. In general our Author's Limitations of them seem very just; though we have seen a few clear Instances, in which a light Raving, which evidently arose from Want of Sleep (joined to some Dread of the Event of the Disease by Inoculation) was happily removed, with every other considerable Complaint, by a moderate Opiate. In sore and fretful Children too, under a large or middling Eruption, as the Time gained to Rest is taken from Pain, and from wasting their Spirits in Crying and Clamour, I have seen Suppuration very benignly promoted by Diacodium. But in the Crisis of the secondary Fever in the confluent or coherent Pock, when there is a morbid Fulness, and Nature is struggling to unload herself by some other Outlets than those of the Skin, which now are totally obstructed (and which seems the only Evacuation, that is not restrained by Opiates) the giving and repeating them then, as has too often been practised, seems importantly erroneous; for I think Dr. Swan has taken a judicious Liberty of dissenting from the great Author he translates, in forbidding an Opiate, if the Spitting abates, or grows so tough and ropy, as to endanger Suffocation. As the Difference of our Oeconomy in the Administration of Physic from that in Swisserland, and Dr. Tissot's just Reputation may dispose many Country Practitioners to peruse this Treatise, I take the Liberty of referring such Readers, for a Recollection of some of my Sentiments of Opiates, long before the Appearance of this Work in French, to the second Edition of the Analysis from P. 94 to 97, &c. K.