livening the Spirits, when they are in an opposite languishing State; and therefore the warm and cool Medicines are equally Cordials, that is they succour Nature alike in different Exigencies.
As to the Method of Cure in the Confluent Kind, it has been of late Years much disputed whether the cold or hot Regimen, as they are called, is the most proper and beneficial. It is true, that our most celebrated Physicians before Dr. Sydenham universally declared for the last; but that Doctor having taken a Resolution at his first entring upon the Practice of Physick, as he himself assured me in Conversation, to act directly contrary in all Cases to the common Method then in Fashion among the most eminent Physicians, (and he told me his Reasons for it) in Conformity to the Design did in the Management of this Disease, as well as others, oppose the common Method of the Physicians of the Court and City; for whereas they set themselves with the utmost Vigour to subdue the Malignity and Putrefaction, which, in their Judgment, tainted and dissolved the Blood in this Kind of Small-Pox, by the use of the most generous and active Medicines, such as Venice Treacle, Virginian Snake-root, Contrayerva, Zedoary, Saffron, Volatile Salt of Hartshorn, Powder of Viper’s Flesh, and the like; Dr. Sydenham being, as said above, determined to oppose their whole Scheme of Practice, fell upon the cold Re-
