The Massachusetts Spy

For the MASSACHUSETTS SPY.

Mr. THOMAS,

If ever the proverb, That desperate diseases require desperate remedies, deserved attention, it most certainly does at this juncture. So open and warm a winter has unaccountably relaxed the solids, and thus evidently proportionably slackened the motion of the fluids; by which means the inward heat is much abated, the principles of the galls poorly, and sparingly furnished, and this important fluid retained in the liver, till the bowels, wanting its resolvent and detergent operation, get coated over with slime, so as to suffer very little to pass, either in or out of them.

This slime is well known to be a proper receptacle for indefinite quantities of air, which, while the body continues cool, lies quiet enough; but being by any means heated, expands, and forces the stomach and intestines into most violent convulsions.

When this scene begins no moment is to be lost, as delays are here, if not totally irretrievable, at least so detrimental that a wise physician will ever lament his compliance to the fond mother, and safe doctor, who expect to relieve the patient, with caraway seed and crabs eyes.

I was once called to a child in this town, who had for fifteen days purged with rhubarb, and crabs eyes added to it, and in all this time the belly continued swelling up, and the nurses wondered how it could possibly happen that so much purging, which passed the bowels freely, should fail to rid them of their contents.

The patient manifestly losing strength, I was called, and with smart cathartics brought away loads of putrid matter, which relieved, and for a time encouraged the parents to hope a cure; but great quantities of the rotten abscess having soaked through the intestines into the circulating mass, it continued languid, had a prodigious eruption over the whole surface of the body, and gradually declined till death.

On the contrary, every child which fell under my care before capture was over much exhausted, and was purged thoroughly, and so frequently as to expel the slime and jelly from the first passages, and the acrid bile from the liver, before the former grew over turgid, and the latter over putrid, very speedily recovered.

The present cool spell of weather, gives a fair opportunity to evacuate the glassy matter from such persons as may abound with it; it may be easily got off while the air remains fixed, which it will while the slime continues cool; but heated, either by warm weather, or a fever, readily raised by the putrid bile, it will expand and produce such symptoms as will give concern enough to all parties engaged for the tortured sufferer.

Boston, January 8th, 1771.

T. YOUNG.