Note 16 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.

We may learn from these observations, the great impropriety of those Egyptian laws which oblige physicians to adopt, in all cases, the prescriptions which had been collected, and approved of, by the physicians of former ages. Every change in the customs of civilized nations, produces a change in their diseases, which calls for a change in their remedies. What havoc would plentiful bleeding, purging, and small beer, formerly used with so much success by Dr. Sydenham in the cure of fevers, now make upon the enfeebled citizens of London! The fevers of the same, and of more southern latitudes, still admit of such antiphlogistic remedies. In the room of these, bark, wine, and other cordial medicines, are prescribed in London in almost every kind of fever.