of clothing, and from imprudence in diet, diarrhoea prevails, and sometimes sporadic cases of dysentery occur. In the summers, bilious remittent fevers, usually of a mild type, show themselves; and in the fall intermittents, with occasionally a case of the much dreaded congestive chill.'" These diseases are very amenable to medical treatment, and are rarely fatal. The ratio of mortality is unusually low, and a remarkable exemption exists from all epidemic and contagious diseases. Another writer, in the same county, "We have intermittent and remittent fevers in summer and fall, and pneumonia and rheumatism afflict those who are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather in winter and spring."

says: ..

A gentleman, writing from Madison County, says: "Chills and fever and light bilious attacks are common, but typhoid and congestive, typhoid with pneumonia, and other fatal diseases, are not prevalent here, though we are not entirely exempt from them."

Dr. W. S. Rice, of Hamilton County, says: "Our principal diseases are fever and ague, and remitting or bilious fever. Some years they prevail almost all over the county, but again we have a very light sprinkling of them. Once or twice I

have seen pneumonia to prevail endemically."

Hæmaturia has also become a frequent complication in the malarial fevers in the northern part of the State, and even as low down on the peninsula as Marion County.

Throughout all the interior of Florida, malarial fevers are generally common, though occasionally localities are found quite exempt. The coast, as a rule, is entirely free from this class of fevers. From my own personal knowledge and observation, much less malarial fevers now prevail in the counties of Hernando and Hillsborough than formerly; and I am assured by Dr. Butts, of Beala, that the same is the fact as regards Marion County.

Dr. J. A. Williams, of Alachua, writes me that certain sections of that county are quite exempt from malarial fevers, while contiguous sections may be quite sickly.

So many other affections appear to be dependent, as it were, upon the susceptibility engendered by the malarial cachexia, that it may be regarded as decidedly healthy wherever experience determines the absence of malaria.

While it is my opinion that Florida is probably the most healthy of the Southern States, yet I think it is a weak enthusiasm to conclude that Florida is the healthiest country on the face of the wide

world. It would be strange, indeed, if her fertile swamps and hammocks did not generate fevers. It has been proved, however, that on her salubrious sea-coast almost immunity from fever may be enjoyed; and it is high praise to say that, if the bane exists, a way of escape is within easy reach of those who select Florida for a home.

A DISCOURSE

ON

BLOODLETTING CONSIDERED AS A THERAPEUTIC AGENT.

By

S. D. GROSS, M.D., LL.D., D.C.L. Oxon.

A DISCOURSE ON BLOODLETTING CONSIDERED AS

A THERAPEUTIC AGENT.

. I DESIRE to engage the attention of the Association, with a view of offering some remarks upon one of the lost arts of the profession. I allude to bloodletting considered as a therapeutic agent. If, in what I am about to say, it shall be my good fortune to make a few converts to the opinions which I have been led to form upon the subject, and, above all, induce this assembly of eminent men, to revise and extend their knowledge of it, I shall not only be greatly rejoiced, but feel that the time devoted to its preparation has not been misspent.

How much this agent has been neglected, nay positively ignored, by the profession during the last thirty years, is too well known to require any comment; how much it was formerly abused is equally a matter of record, if not a lasting shame. Regarded for a long time as the great, if not indispensable, element in the treatment of inflammation, it has gradually sunk so low in the estimation of practitioners that few, if any, have the courage even to hint at its necessity, much less to employ it, lest they should alarm their patients, and thus bring upon themselves public odium. If, now and then, one is bold enough to bleed, he is sure to be taken. to task about it, if he is not actually denounced as a murderer.

When a remedy, once so popular, and regarded for nearly 2000 years by the most eminent and enlightened men as so essential to success in the treatment of disease, has fallen into utter desuetude, it behooves us, especially the older members of the profession, to pause, and to inquire seriously whether there is not something wrong in all this depreciation; whether we have not fallen into the opposite error, and condemned a remedy which, if judiciously employed, is capable of doing vast good. Extremes are always dangerous, and certainly nowhere more so than in the practice of medicine. We may well ask ourselves the question, "Watchman, what of the night"? for every one must perceive that it has a