to receive the lady of the house and her family at breakfast, it is not till after the room has been first filled with clouds of smoke, the effects of which have been removed by opening the windows and doors, and frequent dusting and wiping the furniture, which often, where chimneys are in themselves really good, endure this daily great injury.

The common method of making a coal-fire is, to rake with a poker the dust and lighter ashes that have been left in the grate the preceding day, leaving a considerable quantity of cinders to be the basis of the intended fire; upon this are laid the shavings, or chips of wood or sticks, keeping the most combustible the undermost, to be lighted by a candle; upon these the coals are laid, by putting the smaller-sized with the hand in decent order, crowned with large ones; at the back of which all the remaining contents of the coal-box are promiscuously thrown. The whole is then lighted: but, as any person might sit an hour upon it without injury, no heat is communicated to the chimney till a great part of the inside of the fire is burnt; in the mean time, the smoke in thick volumes rolls, with most seeming perverseness, into the room and other parts of the house, till such time as some heat, being communicated to the chimney, makes it, what is vulgarly called, draw. This grievance is so common, that there is hardly a house to be met with but it is found necessary to open doors and windows in a morning, to clear it of smoke.

Wherever a chimney draws well after the first fire, it is as good an one as can be desired, and the fault lies in mak ing the fire; and it is unwise to try any experiments, or make alterations, lest you make a good chimney a bad one. To cure this, I have tried various ways of making a fire; but none have answered so well as the following, which is in reality only reversing the common mode. The grate is entirely emptied of its contents, and the coals are thrown promiscuously (without having very large ones amongst them) to the height of two or three bars, according to the depth of the grate; upon which the wood is laid, and the cinders are placed at the top, and the fire is lighted by a candle in the usual way; or, if convenient, by a fire-shovel of wellburnt cinders from another fire, upon which the cold cinders must be immediately thrown.

The smoke is very inconsiderable, and goes directly up the chimney; and the cinders are very soon heated. In time the upper surface of the coal takes fire; and, as the smoke issues out, it is arrested by the porous quality of the

cinders, and, passing also through a burning substance, great part of it is consumed; and what issues from the whole mass, to go up the chimney, is very inconsiderable, and of à different appearance to the smoke escaping from fires made in the common form. It is obvious that a great por tion of combustible matter, which is now commonly wasted, is by this means consumed in the fire, and the benefit of it enjoyed; the cinders acting upon the smoke somewhat as a filtering-stone does upon water, and the fuel they catch helps them to burn clearer, and, what may appear extraor dinary, preserves them longer from being consumed. If any one is in doubt about this fact, I refer him to the very satis factory experiments of Dr. Franklin. As this fire consumes downwards, the upper strata of the coals are reduced to cinders before the lower ones; and the appearance of smoke is gradually diminished, though it must be an undoubted fact that as much really issues from the coals. It burns also clearly to the very bottom, without the necessity of stirring it with the poker; and, as it gives as much heat, and lasts twice as long as a fire made in the common way, these are additional arguments in its favour, and will have their proportioned weight where fuel is the dearer.

It is a very proper fire to be left to itself for a length of time, and is the best that can be for a sick chamber, or for those who are fond of fires in their bed-rooms at night; the great inconveniences of which are, that, in the usual mode, they require frequent stirring, and are apt to fill the room with sulphureous vapour, and endanger suffocation.

Servants are in general obstinare, and will require to be instructed a few times; which, with a perceptible abatement of their own trouble, will perhaps induce them to follow this method, which I will venture to pronounce the best in all cases; and the only care necessary is, to keep the coals and cinders well separated.

After all, the chimney may be found to smoke, but then it is from some other cause, and requires its appropriate remedy; as this is offered for one distinct, yet very prevailing inconvenience. If this method was steadily persevered in, I do farther venture to pronounce, that almost nine out of ten, of chimney's 'called bad drawing ones, will obtain a very good name, and that much labour and dirtiness will be avoided, as well as good respirable air preserved uncontaminated, and many tender lungs escape daily torture. As the experiment is in 'every one's power to make, I shall not trouble you with any of mine farther than to say, that I

bave tried it in a great variety of supposed hopeless cases, and never knew it fail of success.

1797, Jan.

VIATOR.

XCIX. Scurvy caused by common Culinary Salt.

MR. URBAN, Enfield, June 5, 1797. OBSERVING that you sometimes dedicate a page to medical subjects, I have taken the liberty to send you two cases of scurvy, which establish a fact, respecting the nature and cause of that disease, of much importance to be generally known. These cases, with the subsequent conjectures, were lately communicated to an eminent physician in town, by whom they would have been submitted to the consideration of the college, for insertion in the Medical Transactions, had that valuable work been continued; but, as I am sorry to say there is no probability at present of such a circumstance taking place, I wish to see them recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine, where I believe they will stand the best chance to be generally read by medical men.

JOHN SHERWEN.

A Letter, addressed to Dr. Francis Milman, Physician Extraordinary to the King's Household, containing Two Cases of Scuroy occasioned by the Patients having eaten largely of common Culinary Salt. To which are added, Conjectures respecting the Propriety of attempting to cure some obstinate Maladies, by scorbuticising the Human System. By John Sherwen, Enfield,

I SIT down with pleasure to fulfil my promise, by stating the particular circumstances respecting the late illness of Master H, which I mentioned to you in a former letter as an instance of the true Marine Scurvy. It is not my wish to take up your time with a tedious detail; but it may be necessary, in order to identify the disease, to inform you, that for several days blood was observed to be almost constantly oozing from a small fungous sore on the ancle, which had before been very nearly, but not completely, cicatrized. This oozing of blood was at first supposed to arise from some accidental friction, and was not deemed of much consequence, till numerous purple spots, and some broad livid

blotches, resembling the ecchymosis occasioned by a bruise, began to appear on his legs, arms, thighs, and other parts of his body. These, added to a fetid breath, exciting alarm in the mind of a very amiable lady who had the care of the child, a fine boy seven years of age, I was sent for on the 29th of March last; and, at the first view (indeed from the lady's own previous description) recognized that disease, with which, at a very early period of my professional engagements, I had an opportunity of being well acquainted.* I immediately pronounced the disorder to be the true marine scurvy, and could not help expressing surprise at meeting with it where I was well assured the patient had not been exposed to what I have always believed, and what is generally allowed, to be the most frequent occasional cause, viz. a diet of salted animal food. He had been as little exposed to every other occasional cause generally enumerated; but, I was informed that he had an uncommon propensity to eating of salt; that he had been in the habit of devouring it with his pudding, and whenever he could conveniently get it, notwithstanding he had been repeatedly checked for so doing. But the family not being aware of any particular bad consequences, had never thought it necessary to have recourse to coercion.

The juice of lemons and oranges, with such vegetables as the season would afford, were recommended to be administered with a liberal hand; yet, very much to my surprise, instead of finding, as I expected, in 48 hours, the purple spots to be a little fainter in their colour, I had the chagrin to perceive them somewhat increased; and on the 3d of April, a bleeding from the nose came on with such violence, as, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, to excite some degree of alarm. I was this day fortunate enough to discover, that the very amiable woman, who had the management of the child, had imbibed a notion that acids would impoverish and thin the blood; and, consequently, notwithstanding my earnest desire to have them administered with freedom, had been using them with a trembling hand; trusting more to the efficacy of the bark, which I had also prescribed. Now, judging it prudent to set aside every kind of officinal composition, I positively enjoined a liberal

* Viz. in the years 1769, 70, and 71, when a surgeon in the service of the Honourable East India Company; during which period I wrote my treatise, intituled," Cursory Observations on the Nature and Cause of the Marine Scurvy;" published by R. Baldwin, Paternoster-Row.

use of the vegetable acids, which from this time were given freely. But it was not till two days more had elapsed, when the sore on the ancle had assumed a better aspect, and the bleeding from that and the nose had ceased, that this good lady acknowledged herself to be thoroughly convinced of the propriety of using them. They were now administered with as much ardour and alacrity as I could wish; and the spots and blotches continued to change every day from a deep purple to a pale liver, or dusky red colour; and at last gradually disappeared.

The symptoms and the mode of cure, establish the true nature of the disorder beyond the possibility of a doubt. I was happy, however, in having an opportunity, on the eleventh day of my attendance, to point out the case, while the characteristic marks of the disease were still visible, as an object of curiosity, to Dr. Wilkinson, an ingenious and skilful physician in this place.

A doubt may possibly remain in your mind respecting the imputed occasional cause; to remove which I beg leave to call your attention to another instance of a similar nature.

On the 9th of March, 1796, George Hatchet, the son of a labouring man in the service of Edward Armstrong, Esq. of Forty Hall, was brought to me on account of a constant bleeding from his gums, which were sore and tender. He had a fetid breath, and a profusion of deep-coloured purple spots of different forms and sizes in various parts of his body. The first question which occurred to me upon the view of this patient was, to ask if he had been living upon salted animal food: the answer was in the negative, and decisive; that he seldom had an opportunity of even tasting a bit of meat of any kind; that he had lived like the other children chiefly upon bread and pudding, and such like; and, besides, that they were plentifully supplied with milk from Forty Hall. This account, added to an examination of the other children, who were in the highest possible state of health and strength, suppressed the next natural supposition, that the disease might have arisen from the same cause as that in the two patients, whose cases are so well related by you in the second volume of the Medical Transactions.

The true nature of the disease, and the indications of cure, were evident; and I had the pleasure, in a day or two after, to have them confirmed by Dr. Wilkinson, who kindly supplied the patient with such vegetables as his garden at that time afforded. As an object of curiosity, I also pointed out the disease to Messrs. Strachans, at the academy near