A collection of treatises on the effects of sol-lunar influence in fevers, with an improved method of curing them / [Francis Balfour].

  • Balfour, Francis, -1818
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A collection of treatises on the effects of sol-lunar influence in fevers, with an improved method of curing them / [Francis Balfour]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to constitute a complete demonstration, are, in a wonderful manner, coincident in time, and correspondent in degree, with the periodical changes that take place in the power of sol-lu- nar attraction. To reject, therefore, those accumulated proofs of its actual operation and efficiency, is to violate the princi- ples and rules, by which we infer the existence of a connec- tion or cause, in every question of philosophy, or common oc- currence of life. The proof of regular changes in the atmosphere correspon- ding with the revolutions of lunar attraction, being now esta- blished by the discovery of a regular diurnal and septenary flux and reflux in the mercury of the barometer, coincident with the diurnal and septenary revolutions of the same power, the theory of sol-lunar influence in fevers receives from this event all the support that can be derived from a fair analogy: and it may be inferred with reason, that changes such as these in the element in which we breathe and move, are not likely to take place wuthout corresponding perturbations in the hu- man frame. The existence of a diurnal flux and reflux in the mercury* of the barometer, is now sufficiently established by the obser- vations of father Boudier*, at Chandernagore ; of Mr Trail, Mr Farquhar, and Colonel Pearce, at Calcutta ; and those which appear in my Treatise, on the Barometer, inserted in the fourth volume of the Asiatic Researches ; and on the Coast of Coromandel, by the observations of Doctor Roxburgh-}*. On the other side of the globe, they have been observed in South AmericaJ, and the West Indies§ ; and also at different- places in Europe[], * Traite de Meteorolog-ie, par Le P. Cotte, pag-e 343. -j* Vide the Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. —• ■ + Traite de Meteorolog-ie, par Le P. Cotte, pag-e 399. § Doctor Moseley’s Treatise on the Diseases of the West Indies, and Le P. Cotte. || At Berlin, by M. Changeux, vide Traite de Meteorolog-ie, par Le P. Cotte, pag-e 618, at Padua; by Mr Toaldo and his nephew, vide Traite d« Metaorolog-ie, par Le P. Cotte, pag-e 616, &e. &r.