VU J AVANT-PROPOS DU TRADUCTEUR

nous n’avions pas réfléchi que , débutant tous les deux dans la carrière, ce n’étoit pas par un ouvrage de quatre volumes de 5oo pages chacun que nous devions y entrer* aussi il s’est présenté un si grand nombre de difficultés , qu’il a fallu se restreindre à une publication partielle, avec l’intention , si cette première partie est goûtée , de donner bientôt les autres.

Les auteurs de médecine se plaignent journellement du peu de matériaux que nous avons sur les fièvres intermittentes et rémittentes ; comme elles forment précisément le commencement du premier volume que j’ai traduit pour ma part, j’aicru quela publication de cettepartie de mon travail auroit le double avantage et de faire connoitre l’état de la médecine en Angleterre sur ces affections, et de faire en même temps pressentir la manière dont notre auteur a conçu l’ensemble de la médecine. Les praticiens françois y puiseront peut-être quelques vues utiles ; c’est le seul but auquel j’ai aspiré, et la seule récompense que j’ambitionne.

Worcester, march i , i8u>

I was fawourecl with your of the 17 of february. I take the liberty of writing in english as you are so well acquainted with it, and I am not in the habit of writing in french. I consider you, Sir, and doctor Marchant, as paying my Treatise a very high compliment. If you can arrange it, I should like the part on intermittent Fever to be followed by that on continued fever , soon as the subjects are so intimately connected. Doctor Marchant was SO good as to transmit to you part of my Inquiry into the vital functions which forms the only addition , which I can make to what is said of simple fever in my Treatise, as it appears in the 3d edition, from wich I am glad to find your translation has been made. The work has meet with great success in America. It is some years since the professor of the Practice of medicine of Philadelphia inserted it among the books necessary to the study of medicine. Under the heafl practice the first book which is mentionned is doctor Cullen s Practice of medicine , the second my Treatise on febrile Diseases , and I have learned through a son of one of the professors of the above University, that it is almost the only book on those diseases generally studied in America. If after I, have seen a copy of the translation I can make any observations on it, which will be

useful to you in future, I shall be happy to transmit them to you. I would say of my practice in fevers in general , that I use bloodletting rather more freely than when the above edition of my Treatise was published , and wine quite and cautiously.

I have the honour to remember,

) Sir ,

Your faithful and humble servant,