20 OLD AND NEW VIEWS ON
the Nature, Causes, Subjects, Progress, Change, Signs, Prognostics, Preservatives, and several Methods of Curing all Consumptions, Coughs, and Spitting of Blood.” Dr. Gideon Harvey wrote several books in a racy, scurrilous style, but they appear to have been of no scientific value. He mixed up a number of wasting diseases, which had not much to do with each other, under the head of Consamption, and the result was considerable confusion. Dr. Gideon Harvey appears to have had strong notions on the subject of climate and diet for consumptives, of which a good account will be found in the British Medical Journal, October 21, 1911.
Morton’s “ Phthisiologia.”
The next work of importance on consumption in this country was published at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to wit, Richard Morton’s “ Phthisiologia, or Treatise of Consumption.” It was originally published in Latin, afterwards trans- lated into English, and ran through more than one edition, being evidently widely read and approved in the eighteenth century. The author treated of ““Consumptions,” not only of pulmonary consump- tion, but of many kinds of wasting disease, such as that arising from discharging abscesses, from diabetes, from loss of blood, and from excessive diarrhoea due to various causes, but he devoted his chief attention to pulmonary consumption, �
