Note 112 — CHAP. I.

Dr. Huck Saunders, whose recent loss the world has reason to regret on account of his experience and sagacity as a physician, as well as his virtues as a man, communicated to me, in conversation, some observations on the cure of obstinate intermittents, which deserve to be mentioned here. When he was physician to the army at the Havannah he cured a number of agues which had resisted the bark, by giving two ounces of the vinous tincture of rhubarb and six drams of the tincture of sena seven or eight hours before the fit. This being repeated two or three times, carried off the disease. He also informed me, that he had met with agues in England which did not yield to the bark; but, upon leaving it off, and putting the patients on a course of mercury, they were cured upon returning to the use of the bark.

Arsenic has also been found to be an effectual remedy in intermittent fevers. I was informed by Dr. Huck Saunders, that when he was in North America, in the war before the last, there was an expedition undertaken against the Cherokee Indians, whose country is extremely subject to agues; and as an adequate quantity of bark would have been very cumbersome where light service was necessary, Mr. Russel, who had the medical management of the expedition, provided a great number of pills, containing each one eighth part of a grain of arsenic, by the proper use of which he was enabled to cure the intermittent fevers with which the troops were seized.

I shall here mention another unusual remedy in intermitting fevers; and though I can bring only one instance in proof of its efficacy, yet this is so strong as to make it deserve farther trial. A man, on board of the Sandwich, had an obstinate intermittent which had resisted the bark, and was stopped by applying to the stomach a plaster, composed of gum plaster, epispastic plaster, and opium, in proportions which I do not now recollect.