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 bave 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 mor tality 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, nor 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.

Only one child died among all the foregoing 129! The above account was framed from the then physicians of that day, to wit: Doctors Kearsley, Zachary, Hooper, Cadwallader, Shippen, Bond, and Sommers, they being the only physicians who inoculated. Doctor Græme had then no share in it, being himself confined with illness the whole time the disease was in town.

1746-Even at this late period religious scruples against the smallpox had not subsided; for I see in a MS. journal of John Smith, Esq., (son-in-law of James Logan,) that he thus intimates his disapprobation of the measure, to wit: "Two or three persons (in one month) have the smallpox, having got it at New York. Inoculation he dislikes, because it seems clear to him that we, who are only tenants, have no right to pull down the house that belongs only to the landlord who built it!"

It was probably about this period of time that Thomas Jefferson (say about 1760) came to Philadelphia, on purpose to get inoculated for the smallpox, and was placed in a cottage house, back from the city, near to the Schuylkill. It was then that Charles Thomson first became acquainted with him, and from him I derive this fact.

Samuel Preston, Esq., an aged gentleman, has given me some ideas of the fatality of the smallpox among the Indians in Bucks county. It got among the Indians settled at Ingham spring, and as they used sweating for it, it proved fatal. Several of the Indians, as they had never heard of the disease, thought it was sent by the whites for their ruin. Such as survived, abandoned the place. Tedeuscung, the Delaware chief, was among

the latter.

Of Plants for Medicine.

In the olden time, the practice of medicine and the dependence of the people upon physicians in cases of ordinary sickness, were essentially different from the present. Physicians then were at greater expense for their education, with less compensation for services. Then, all accredited physicians were accustomed to go to England or Scotland to prepare themselves. The people were much accustomed to the use of plants and herbs in cases of sickness; and their chief resort to physicians was in calls of surgery, or difficult cases of childbirth. As the druggist shops have since increased in drugs and mineral preparations, the use of herbs and roots has more and more declined. We have, indeed, since then, brought the study of the names of plants into great repute, under the imposing character of botanical lectures; but the virtue and properties are too often abandoned for a mere classification of uninstructive names. In that day, every physician's house was his own drug shop, at which all his patients obtained their medicine.

I have formerly seen aged persons, not possessing more than the ordinary knowledge of plants for family medicines, who could tell me, in a walk through the woods or fields, the medicinal uses of