their locks and dams, sustained both these freshes, which have occurred since these valuable works were formed, without any injury of importance.

Storms.--1745, March 26.-Friday last a violent gust occurred, which damaged houses and cast down trees.

1747, April 30.-A violent north-east storm did much damage 1750, December 25.-A violent north-east storm last Thursday; it damaged the wharves and sunk some small craft,

1753, November 14.-A violent gale from the east overflowed the wharves, and water lodged in most of the stores.

1770 was "the great September gale," in which was a great loss of vessels all along our coast.

1786, April 1.-A north-east gale, with hail and snow, did much damage.

1788, November 10th and 11th.-A violent storm from south-east caused a heavy swell in the river; many vessels were injured.

1796, January 7.-A violent storm last night did considerable damage.

1805, December 28th and 29th.-A great storm-" a mere hurricane," by which several vessels were sunk at the wharves, and others broke loose and went to pieces.

1819, September 28.-The meadows below the city were overflowed by the great rise of the river in the late gale.

1821, September 3.-A great storm of rain and wind from the north-east destroyed many trees, blew down chimneys, and unroofed the bridge at the Upper ferry. The Schuylkill dam rose much.

The "old fashioned snow storm," (so called) of the 20th and 21st of February, 1829, the liveliest and best picture I have seen of late years of the olden-time snow scenes of my youth, came on the 14th and 15th January, 1831, to be far eclipsed by "the deep snow" of this last memorable time. It was really cheering and delightful, to rise in the snow-stillness of the Sunday morning of the 16th January, when,

**Earth robed in white, a peaceful Sabbath held—”

in a double sense,-to witness such towering pyramids and deeply piled banks of glistening snow, all resting after the subsidence of the storm, in calm repose. It cheered the men of olden days, to be thus able to show to the young of the rising generation, the unexpected, and welcome living picture of scenes oft told, but difficult to be conceived, or credited by those youngsters who had never seen them. Hardly expecting to see such another storm, in my future life, I determined, at the time, to preserve sundry notices of its effect, &c. throughout the country, not now needful to relate. It laid upon the country, and was used upon the roads till the middle of February, actually exhausting all the pleasures of sleighing by its long continuance.

There was a very remarkable storm of rain at Philadelphia, at

midnight of the 25th of June, 1835, and continued till three o'clock in the morning. It being at time of high tide, the water sewer in Dock street filled, and the street overflowed and filled all the cellars, and even the ground floors of the houses with water. A similar heavy rain occurred on the night of the 1st July, 1842, again overflowing the sewer, and filling the cellars.

Meteors.-1737, May 7, was seen an aurora borealis.

1743, December 8, a comet visible for five or six nights. 1748, April 21, a comet visible for eight or ten nights past. 1750, February 16, a very bright aurora borealis.

1756, December 30, people much surprised with the sight of two mock suns.

1807, October 7, a comet visible.

1814, in November and December a comet is seen.

In 1749, 17th of 12mo.-There was last evening an extraordinary appearance of the aurora borealis, which moved from north-east to north-west, and back again.

In 1764, 21st of July.-There was seen at Philadelphia, at seven in the evening, a great fiery meteor, about fifty degrees above the horizon, of bigger apparent diameter than the sun, which exploded in sight of the city with a report like springing of a mine, when were seen thousands of pieces of fire to diverge.

The meteors of the 13th November, 1833, were the most remarkable ever witnessed. A beholder says, he was sitting alone in a well lighted apartment, at 4 A. M., when he suddenly saw through the window a shower of sparks falling past it on the outside. He supposed the house was on fire, and rushing to the door, to his extreme amazement, he found the entire atmosphere filled with flakes of fire, (for they fully resembled flakes of snow of a stellated or radiated form,) of a pale rose red, seemingly of an inch diameter, falling in a vertical direction, as thick as he ever saw snow! Intermingled with the smaller stars, were a larger kind, equal to one in a hundred of the others, of an intense sapphire blue, seemingly of three to four inches diameter. This shower continued up to broad day light. They were seen all over the United States, and have been variously described, but all agreeing that they surpassed all other known cases.

VOL. 11.--2 W

MEDICAL SUBJECTS.

To note the thousand ills

Which flesh and blood assail.

UNDER this head it is intended to comprise such facts as have come to our knowledge respecting early diseases; to name some of the plants in use as remedies in primitive days; and to cite some facts concerning some of the earliest named physicians.

Of Febrile Diseases.

1687-Phineas Pemberton, in his MSS., states, that a great mortality occurred at the Falls of Delaware, (in 1687,) occasioned by "the great land flood and rupture."

1699-Isaac Norris, Sen., left among his papers a record, saying, "About the time of the harvest proved the hottest summer he had ever before experienced. Several persons died in the field with the violence of the heat." In the autumn of the same year, the town was visited by a very destructive fever: he says of it, "This is quite the Barbadoes distemper-[i. e., the yellow fever of modern times:] they void and vomit blood. There is not a day nor night has passed for several weeks, but we have the account of the death or sickness of some friend or neighbour. It hath been sometimes very sickly, but I never before knew it so mortal as now: nine persons lay dead in one day at the same time: very few recover. All business and trade down. The fall itself was extremely moderate and open." Five of his own family died.

Thomas Story, a public Friend, and the recorder of the city, has also spoken of this calamity in his Journal, as being a scourge which carried off from six to eight of the inhabitants daily, and visiting the most of the families. "Great was the fear," says he, "that fell upon all flesh! I saw no lofty or airy countenances, por heard any vain jesting; but every face gathered paleness, and many hearts were humbled."

The whole number who died was about two hundred and twenty, of whom about eighty to ninety were of the society of Friends.

1717-The summer of this year is mentioned in the letter of Jonathan Dickinson, as a time in which was "great prevalence of fever and ague in the country parts adjacent to Philadelphia."

1741-The summer of this year is called a time of great sickness in Philadelphia-Vide secretary Peters' MS. letter to the proprietary,

* In a letter of subsequent date, he says, that "three years after" the same disease became a scourge at New York, "such as they had never seen before! Some hundreds died, and many left the town for many weeks, so that the town was almost left desolate."

to wit: It was called the "Palatine distemper," because prevailing among the German emigrants, probably from their confinement on shipboard. The inhabitants were much alarmed, and fled to country towns and places; and the country people, in equal fear, avoided to visit the city. From June to October, two hundred and fifty persons died others, of course, recovered. Noah Webster, speaking of this sickness, says, after the severe winter, the city was severely visited with "the American plague." The same disease, Doctor Bond has said, was yellow fever, supposed to have been introduced by a load of sick people from Dublin.

1743-Some of it also again prevailed in Philadelphia, says Secretary Peters, while at the same time, just such another disease visited New York, and was there considered as certainly "not imported." Joel Neaves' case, who died of it at Philadelphia, was thus described: "He had a true, genuine yellow fever, with black vomit and spots, and suppression of urine-all this from overheating himself in a very hot day, by rowing a boat. He also gave it to others about him, and they to others; yet but few of them died."

1747-Noah Webster, in his work on Pestilence, says, "This year the city was again visited by bilious plague," preceded by influenza. February, 1748, as said by said Peters' letters, was a time of great mortality in all the provinces; it was called "the epidemic pleurisy." It thinned the country so much, that it was said that servants, to fill the places of others in town and country, were bought in great numbers, as fast as they arrived. The Indians were afraid to come to a treaty by reason of the sickness. It stopped suddenly, before the sum

mer came.

1754-I perceive, by the gazettes, that there were many deaths by reason of the "Dutch distemper."

1755-It had often happened, that the servants coming from Germany and Holland, after being purchased, communicated a very malignant fever to whole families and neighbourhoods where they went, It was of such frequent occurrence as to be called, in the gazettes, the "Dutch distemper." This year I find it stated, that it is now settled "to be precisely the disease known as the jail fever."

Of Smallpox.

This loathsome and appalling disease was of much more peril to our forefathers than to us, in our better management now; to the poor Indians it was terrific and destructive.

The happy art of inoculation was first practised in Philadelphia, in the year 1731; and the first person of note who then devoted himself as a forlorn hope for the purpose of example, was J. Growden, Esq. The circumstance, with his character in life as a public officer in high standing, made his house a place of after notoriety, and is the same venerable and respectable-looking building (when you can see it!) now in the rear of some two or three small houses, since

put up, in South Fourth street, vis-à-vis to the first alley below High street. It was then a dignified, two-story, large house, with a rural courtyard in front.

The terror of inoculation was not such in Philadelphia at any time, as seized upon our brethren of New England, and of Boston in particular, in 1721, when their doctor, Z. Boyleston, had his life menaced, his person assaulted in the streets and loaded with execrations, for having dared, with scientific hardihood, to inoculate his only son and two of his negroes. Even sober, pious people were not wanting there, to regard it as an act of constructive murder, in case the patient died.

We, also, had our public attempts, growing out of the above facts, to forestall the public mind, and to create a religious prejudice against the attempt at inoculation. Our Weekly Mercury, of 1st January, 1722, contains the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Masley, who preached and published against the inoculation of the smallpox, which he calls "an unjustifiable art, an infliction of an evil, and a distrust of God's overruling care, to procure us a possible future good!"

Under such circumstances, it became a cause of some triumph in Philadelphia, to publicly announce the success of the experiment on J. Growden, Esq., made in the Gazette of March, 1731, to wit: "The practice of inoculation for the smallpox begins to grow among us. J. Growden, Esq., the first patient of note that led the way, is now upon the recovery."

1701-Is the first-mentioned occurrence of smallpox in the city of Philadelphia. In that year, one of the letters in the Logan MSS. says, "the smallpox was very mortal and general." As early as 1682, the vessel that brought out William Penn had the smallpox on board, which proved fatal to many while at sea.

1726-A ship from Bristol, England, with passengers, had many down with the smallpox; but they, with George Warner, the informant, being landed at the Swedes' church, below the town, and conducted through the woods to the "Blue-house tavern," out South street, all got well without communicating to the inhabitants of the city. 1730-Was called the "great mortality from the smallpox." That year there died of it, George Claypole and his five children. He was a lineal descendant from the Lord General Claypole, who married Cromwell's daughter. His wife Deborah lived to be upwards of ninety years of age. Vide Logan MSS.

1736-7-There are some evidences of the progress of inoculation, for the Gazettes thus state the fact, to wit: From the fall of 1736, to the spring of 1737, there have been 129 persons inoculated, viz.,

This was the same year it was first attempted in England, after the Turkish man

ner, upon the daughter of the celebrated Lady Montague.