Note 573 — ON REGIMEN IN ACUTE DISEASES.

The description here given of cynanche, more especially of the variety in which the ulceration spreads down to the trachea and produces engorgement of the lungs, is most characteristic, and bespeaks a great practical acquaintance with the disease. Judged of in a becoming spirit of candor, it must be admitted that even at the present day we have scarcely made any advancement in our knowledge of this subject. What are our descriptions of ulcerous sore-throat, diptherite, œdema glottidis, croup, and laryngismus stridulus, but reproductions in a divided and (may I be allowed to suggest?) a less accurate form, of the general views here presented by our author? For an abstract of the views of the other ancient authorities in medicine, see Paulus Ægineta, Book III., 27. Aretæus deserves particularly to be consulted (Morb. Acut., i., 7). It will be remarked that our author speaks of a spontaneous determination to the skin, as being calculated to remove the urgent symptoms within. Galen, in commenting upon this clause, states that some physicians were in the practice of applying to the skin certain medicines possessed of ulcerative powers, in order to determine to the surface, and thus imitate Nature’s mode of cure.