brandy, to ensure the success of our spiritual endeavors; and to the joy of all, the remedies seemed to work together for good. In the absence of all local congestions the patient was thoroughly roused by the stimulants, and in eight days. and nights, she had taken a gallon of the best brandy we could procure, and from that point she rapidly rallied, and was saved.

This recovery acted like magic on the community, and the dozen or more cases that fell into my hands were more controllable, and ended in recovery. The tonic of restored confidence was all-powerful, and the community clustered around me as the oracle of their destiny; my fortune was made, and a business from that hour secured, which never forsook me.

About two months elapsed; the fright had disappeared from the public mind, and autumn was far advanced, when a family noted for neatness were stricken down. Four young persons in a single house fell sick in a few days, and our hero of the cabin, whose name was Bell, was again on his feet. The love of the people for the "old doctor" had revived; he was called, and began the treatment of the fever by a cathartic of calomel; in ten days I was called to his assistance; the specific effects of this substance were seen in two of the patients, and the two remaining ones had taken it, but were placed in my hands by his request. The first case, a young lady of great beauty, and much beloved, died on the twenty-second day with congestion of the bowels, preceded by frightful delirium and demoniac yells. The second sister died in two days after; a sweet and confiding girl, with a form as perfect as a Venus, and a skin as pure and white as Parian marble, and the rich red glow on her lovely cheek, surrounded by raven-black locks, and eyes as soft and spiritual as the angels' whisper, made her an object of surpassing beauty as she lay on her dying pillow. Congestion of the lungs supervened, and the fever-consumed

victim went to her long fest. The first brother was convalescing, when this sister was carried by the door of his room; his brain reeled, and in an hour his mind wandered; in three days, congestion of the brain laid his manly form in the quiet grave, near the dwelling of his medical attendant.

The second young man was yet able to rise from his bed, and his mother, a strict botanic, and a great friend to pepper, rose in the night and gave him a strong dose of pepper-tea, to keep up his strength. His case, next morning, showed signs of congestion of the mucous coats, and all at once his tongue became very red, resembling beef covered with varnish and dried. On the sixteenth day of his sickness, he was seized with sudden pain in the right side; he groaned for a few moments, wished to get up, and a quart of venous blood was voided at a single passage, and when I arrived, his symptoms were all better; his skin moist, his pulse natural, and strange as it may seem, he floated quietly on in this condition for four days, and on the fatal twentyfirst, he insisted on knowing if his sisters and brother were dead; he fixed his mild blue eye on mine, and said with great earnestness, "I know they are dead; tell me, do not deceive me; tell me, it will not scare me." I told him: the next setting sun found him stretched on a board, and clad in his grave-clothes. It wounds me to write of this poor boy, he prayed so hard to live; and was gentle and confiding, and so mild were his symptoms, that, but for the fatal pepper, he might probably have lived. This tragedy, rapid and frightful, totally confounded me, and for the benefit of the reader, I record the results of my observations.

The cases exactly resembled all the others, and all of them ended in local congestions, and any attempt to give a stimuus in such cases was fatal. These congestions did not occur in any case where I began the treatment. I gave no calomel, no active cathartics, the mildest febrifuges, and regulated the bowels mainly by enemas. This treatment did not dis

turb the vital forces, nor change essentially the character of the fever, which was a chemical action of a miasm that had entered the system through the lungs. All the cases, without exception, treated by active medication, were attended with congestions; the calomel cathartics in two cases, and the pepper in a third, and a mental impression in a fourth on seeing his sister's dead body, seemed to my mind to give a fatal determination to these four cases.

The cause of this fatal fever, I regard as local and miasmatic; and this view is confirmed by the fact, that on the same locality, the succeeding year, all the inhabitants were subject to a black jaundice; no one was confined by its effects, but dozens were as yellow as the pure Indian; the symptoms were attended with great sleepiness, which lasted, together with the yellow hue of the skin, for the space of four weeks. I am satisfied that regions where no rank growth of vegetation occurs, often give out miasmatic influences. Dr. Watson, of London, sustains this view of fevers, by some very satisfactory examples. From soils where no vegetation has existed for years, from sandy plains percolated by water, from water saturated with vegetable matter thrown into stagnant pools, fevers as fatal may arise, as those which seem to have their origin in a fenny region. But this fact is no more indisputably established, than the fact that certain localities, in certain seasons especially, have great power, by physical emanations from the earth, in producing most singular and varied phenomena, of a strictly nervous character.

Leaving these suggestions for your consideration, I pass on to other and different scenes. My store of old watches came into play; a gentleman wishing to sell out his land, divided it up into ten-acre lots. In one of these I invested all the wealth I possessed, which did not exceed a hundred dollars; shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother, I soon prepared logs for the mill, sufficient to erect me a small

dwelling; into which, in the lapse of eight months, I moved. I was never happier than when preparing the lumber, and splitting the blocks of sand-stone for the foundation of my dwelling. One customer, whose wife I had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for my dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished me nails and glass; and for two years I fed my cow and raised my own corn to feed my gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. The profits of my first two years' labor barely sufficed to pay for my home and feed my family; when the terrible drought of '46 appeared, I was forced to relinquish the horse which I then hired, for my nag was dead. For five months I performed all my business on foot, often travelling six and ten miles to see my patients. The earth was parched and dry; the streams were all dried up; all classes of crops were shrivelled to a mere shadow; and the country was deprived of half its animals during the year; one half had been sold to find food for the other. These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I had food and shelter for myself-blessings about which I had often been in doubt-and I was fully prepared to "let the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing." The first winter was one of great severity; and so changeable was the climate, that the most hideous snowstorms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads were often frozen up in a single night, leaving it neither possible to travel on horseback nor in a carriage. I had a patient some five miles distant, sick with "lung fever" (pneumonia), and in an attendance of forty days, I made thirty journeys on foot. His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my labor a new clock, a new overcoat (which I greatly needed), and a hive of bees. This toiling family of honey-makers, I prized highly, and for four years they furnished me with honey, when disease and fickleness left their dwellings vacant.