14. There were many instances of patients in this fever, who suddenly fell down dead, upon being moved, without any previous symptoms of approaching dissolution. This was more especially the case, when they arose to go to stool.
15. The contagion of this fever was frequently conveyed from the hospital to the camp, by means of blankets and clothes.
16. Those black soldiers who had been previously slaves, died in a greater proportion by this fever, or had a much slower recovery from it, than the same number of white soldiers.
17. The remedies which appeared to do most service in this disease were vomits of tartar emetic, gentle dozes of laxative salts, bark, wine, volatile salt, opium, and blisters.
18. An emetic seldom failed of checking this fever if exhibited while it was in a _forming_ state, and before the patient was confined to his bed.
19. Many causes concurred to produce, and increase this fever; such as the want of cleanliness, excessive fatigue, the ignorance or negligence of officers in providing suitable diet and accommodations for their men, the general use of linen instead of woollen clothes in the summer months, and the crowding too many patients together in one hospital, with such other inconveniences and abuses, as usually follow the union of the _purveying_ and _directing_ departments of hospitals in the _same_ persons. But there is one more cause of this fever which remains to be mentioned, and that is, the sudden assembling of a great number of persons together of different habits and manners, such as the soldiers of the American army were in the years 1776 and 1777. Doctor Blane informs us, in his observations upon the diseases of seamen, "that it sometimes happens that a ship with a long established crew shall be very _healthy_, yet if strangers are introduced among them, who are also _healthy_, sickness will be mutually produced." The history of diseases furnishes many proofs of the truth of this assertion[51]. It is very remarkable, that while the American army at Cambridge, in the year 1775, consisted only of New-Englandmen (whose habits and manners were the same) there was scarcely any sickness among them. It was not till the troops of the eastern, middle, and southern states met at New-York and Ticonderoga, in the year 1776, that the typhus became universal, and spread with such peculiar mortality in the armies of the United States.