Though most children go through the complaint with safety, and scarcely are subject to one unpleasant symptom, it not unfrequently happens, that from some peculiarity of constitution, want of care and proper management, they are lost, or become the victims of a lingering complaint, from which they never perfectly recover. It is not too much to say, that three fourths of those who die in measles might be saved by proper treatment in the first instance; and where this is not employed sufficiently early, some of the worst consequences may still be prevented. If this complaint sometimes baffles the skill and judgment of the most practised and experienced physicians, what must be the result of feeble, inert practice, or mistaken opinion?
From the beginning of the year till late in the spring, the wind blew almost constantly from E. & N.E. : we have uniformly observed, that when the easterly winds have prevailed for a length of time with little variation, nervous people and those subject to lowness of spirits are considerably affected; and about this time many such deplorable cases claimed our attention. The long continuance of cold is in itself depressing, and when combined with a cloudy foggy atmosphere, materially assists any moral cause in producing hypochondriasis and melancholy. These again are often dispersed by the cheering influence of a fine spring day, or the grateful warmth of a summer’s sun. The state of the weather not unfrequently arrests the arm of the intended suicide, or impels the fatal stroke: hopeless indeed is that stale which resists alike the consolation of friendship, the balm of the physician, and the joys of the opening summer.
Catarrh, or what is vulgarly termed a cold in the head, was also frequent in the beginning of the year, and as the summer and autumn proceeded, gave way to synochus, bilious and bowel complaints: none of these, however, presented any unusual appearances.
The following is an enumeration of the diseases which the writer of this article has attended from the 20th of November to the 20th of December, 1808:
Acute diseases.Scarlet fever, 6.....Scarlet fever and sore-throat, 8.....Inflammatory sore-throat, 3.....Intermittent fever, 2....Typhus fever, 1....Catarrhal fever, 10....Puerperal fever, 2....Acute rheumatism, 6....Pleurisy, 1....Peripneumony, 3....Measles, 4....Hooping-ough, 5....Small-pox, 3 ....Peritoneal inflammation, 2....Gout, 2... Acute diseases of infants, 6.
Chronic diseases.Pulmonary consumption, 3....Cough and dyspnœa, 18....Marasmus, 2....Pleurodyne, 4....Lumbago and sciatica, 3....Chronic rheumatism, 8....Asthenia, 6....Palsy, 2....Dolor faciei, 3....Cephalalgia, 4....Gastrodynia, 7....Enterodynia, 3....Dyspepsia, 3 Diarrhoea, 5....Bilious vomiting, 3....Dysentery, 4....Dropsy, 3.... Hœmorrboids, 2....Hœmatemesis, 2....Epilepsy, 1....Cutaneous diseases, 5....Menorrhagia, 3....Amenorrhosa, 4....Leucorrhosa, 2.
Of the acute diseases it appears, from the above list, that scarlet fever and sore-throat were the most prominent; they were the most frequent in November, and arc now on the decline, no new case having occurred within the last week. In
