the fever is too weak to produce the eruption, it must be increased; when it is too violent, it must be diminished. Hence the strength of the patients must be often fupported with generous diet. The people believe in a number of fpecifics, but the difeafe has not become lefs frequent. External remedies are almost always necessary, such as the application of warmth to the head, in the form of vapour, warm bath, or decoctions of various plants; a decoction of foap is often of great ufe, when the head-ach is violent. Sinapisms and blisters are likewise applied with advantage. If the morbid matter be deposited on the surface of the body, it occasions malignant and obstinare fores, which give a great deal of trouble. Antimony must always be an ingredient in whatever is applied to thefe. If the matter have a tendency to depofite itself in the nails, it must be encouraged by the application of ftimulants; fuch as, tincture of cantharides, blifters, or by touching a fresh plica with the fingers. Against the vermin, hair-powder rubbed with mercury is the best remedy. If all these means be inadequate to produce the crifis, inoculation of the disease will often effect it. It is performed by putting on a cap which has just been worn by one who has had a recent plica.'

After a complete crifis, the plica separates from the head, and remains attached only by the found hair. If it has become dry, and all fymptoms have ceased, it may be cut off. On the contrary, if recent, and the symptoms still continue its removal is attended with great hazard, often inducing other violent diseases.

Med. and Chir. Rev.
from Duncan's An, Vol. 1.

The following Review of a Work entitled, "Phenomena und Sympathetie der Natur nebft dem wunderbaren Geheimnifs Wunden ohne Berührung vermöge des Vitriols nach K. DIGBY, blos fympathetisch zu heilen, i. e. The Phænomena and Sympathy of Nature; together with the wonderful Secret of curing Wounds without touching, fimply in a fympathetical Manner, by Means of Vitriol, according to K. DIGBY;" will tend to shew that the Days of SIR KENELM DIGBY ftill exist (or did lately), on the Continent of Europe.

THE author of this work is M. P. Coeliftin Störk, a Benedictine monk in Banz. His intention is to take under his protection, what is called fympathy, and all fympathetic cures; and to illuftrate them from natural laws. In doing this, he exhibits proofs of much reading; and upon the whole, an exertion of learning, worthy to have been bestowed on a better and more important fubject. The ground upon which the author builds his whole fuperftructure, to prove the existence of fympathetical cures, is, that the thing itfelf exifts, therefore it is poffible; and all we have to do, is to find out the caufes why it exifts. With the proofs of this existence, however, the author, who pretends to leave nothing unproved, goes very fuperficially to work. He admits as true, without any hiftorical criticism, every account of fympathetical cures and appearances; and endeavours to find out the laws of nature, according to which thefe appearances follow. All thofe known accounts of fympathetic appearances and cures, defcribed by our countryman Sir Kenelm Digby, are, with him, proved historical facts it is in his eyes a true prognoftic of the speedy diffolution of a fick perfon, when dogs howl without any known caufe; or when the bird of death, the owl, makes a fcreaming in the neighbourhood. He even receives as true, the most incredible hiftories of the effects of imagination of the mother,

upon the child in the womb, without at all examining them. Nay, he confidently tells the fable after Digby, that a man, or even an animal, feels the most excruciating pain in his posteriors, when his excrement is burnt; and that man and beast may be brought into the greatest danger of life, if their excrements are flowly dried in fimoke. In a cow, whofe milk is boiled away one third on the fire, the udder inflames, and instead of water the voids blood. All thofe ftories of the fympathetic powder, &c. he relates as occurrences whofe truth is proved. His theory for the explanation of thefe appearances is as follows; there is a twofold fympathy, the one in the fouls and bodies of men, and the other in the bodies of the univerfe. This fympathy excites a fimilarity of affection, and has its origin in the great law of love, which is the bond that unites all beings, and rifes to the very divinity from which it flowed. The phyfical caufes of this fympathy lie, in the immenfe number of atoms and fmall particles, which are difperfed through the atmofphere, and which often fuffer a peculiar attraction; still with the defign, that the attraction of homogeneal parts, or of fuch, which, in both the attracting bodies, are of one figure, one being, and one nature, is much greater; and that, when once fuch an attraction takes place, every thing which adheres to the attracted body, and which is united with it, is alfo at once taken away and drawn along with it. By means of these positions the author explains all fympathetical appearances. If for example, when the milk boils upon the fire, and runs over, the cow inftantaneously has the most excruciating pains in her udder, provided it is not prevented by a fympathetic effect of throwing a handful of falt in the fire; this is explained in the following manner. The milk that fell on the burning coals becomes changed into vapours, which difperfe themselves every where in the air, and are further dragged along by the air and the beams of the fun, and arrive, in conjunction with the

atoms of the fire, to the udder of the cow which gave the milk. The udder has an exclufive fufceptibility of attraction for the vapour, because it was the fource from whence the milk flowed. The udder being now very tender, and, on account of the teats, being much subject to inflammation, the conclufion of course arifes of itself, that through these atoms, the udder becomes inflamed, fwells, becomes hard, and knotty. The reason why the falt thrown into the fire prevents this, is as follows: the falt is cool, and of a more fixed nature, and precipitates the fire; for which very reafon, a chimney on fire becomes extinguished when falt is thrown on it. Upon fuppofitions fimilar to thofe adduced, nearly all the explanations of the author are grounded. The effects of the famous fympathetic powder, he explains in the following manner: The atoms of the vitriol, in the lye of which, the cloth, ftained with the blood of the wound, is laid, are poffeffed of cooling and healing powers, and force themselves into the wound, in the fame manner, as the atoms of fire, milk, and falt, into the udder of the cow, and effect a cooling and healing therein. The exiftence of maternal marks, the author conceives he has fufficiently explained. He takes the well-known fact for his foundation; that when two ftringed inftruments are tuned to the fame pitch, and the string of one is touched, the corresponding ftring of the other founds without being ftruck. Now the mother and the child in her womb are in a much clofer connexion, than these two inftruments: confequently, the touching of a conceiving ftring of the mother, muit have an effect upon the confonant string of the child, and must produce in its imagination, (in the imagination of a child in the womb!!) as well as in its body, the fame effects. A mulberry fell upon the bare neck of a woman with child; fhe was delivered of an infant with a mulberry upon the very spot. The imagination of the mother was wholly filled by the particles of the mulberry; she became greatly

moved and astonished. A good part of these atoms, or spirit of the mulberry, went towards the brain of the child, and at the fame time to the very spot of the body, in which the mother had received the impreffion: and the fpirits, accompanied by the atoms of the mulberry, made in the skin a deep engraved mark; as kindled gunpowder on the face!

Med. and Chir. Rev.

Review of JONES' Medical, Philofophical, and vulgar Errors, of various Kinds, Jr. &c..

A MORE fertile field of both amufement and inftruction, can perhaps hardly be found, than the one our author has chofen to employ thofe hours of leifure, which sickness and confinement had occafioned. He thought justly, that he could not be better engaged, than in breaking a spear against fuch deep-rooted medical errors, as have been permitted to travel down to us from time out of mind, as matters of unqueftionable veracity. It is no inconfiderable step, he obferves, in favour of fcience, to bring ourselves to doubt of the reality of fome facts advanced for truth, not only by the ancients, as from their own knowledge, but by fome moderns also, in fpite of the celebrity of their names. From the various remarks of the author, we fhall, for the entertainment of our readers, if not for their inftruction, give a few of the most striking.

Thefe inftances, as I had naturally a narrow fwallow, and being no Roman catholic, have not been in the habit of crediting marvels, have given me an utter difrelish for marvellous cures performed, even by men of eminence, though attested alfo by men in high ftations; infomuch that I find great diffi