Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/34

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IS BRITISH PHYSICIANS. If under this treatment, loaded with bed-clothes, and almost stifled with heat, they happen to feel faint, "cause them," says the doctor, " to lie on their right side, and bow themselves forward, call them by their names, beat them with a rosemary branch, or some other sweet little thing — do not let them on any account sleep, but pull them by the ears, nose, or hair, suffering them in no wise to sleep, until such time as they have no luste to sleep ; ex- cept to a learned man in physick, the case appears to bear the contrary. If under this discipline they happily recover, and find their strength be sore wasted, let them smell to an old sweet apple, and use other restoratives of similar efficacy ; for," concludes Dr. Caius, " there is nothing more com- fortable to the spirits than good and sweet odours." The disease was of the most malignant and fatal character ; it immediately killed some in opening their windows, some in one hour, many in two, and at the longest " to them that merrily dined, it gave a sorrowful supper." He called it " Ephemera," or a fever of one na- tural day, for it lasted only twenty-four hours. In the fifth year of the reign of Edward VI. it began at Shrewsbury in the midst of April, and proceeded with great mortality to Ludlow, and other places in Wales, then to Chester, Coventry, Oxford, and other towns in the south ; it reached London 7th July, from thence it went througii the east part of England into the north, till the end of August, and entirely ceased towards the close of Septem- ber. Caius enumerates many causes of the disease, but chiefly shews why it attacks the English more than any other nation. " The reason is none