Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every
one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken
city.
At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the same manner
as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city; but the ill success
which attended this course soon satisfied him that the treatment was
wrong. He therefore undertook to subdue it by purging and bleeding the
patient, and succeeded. The new practice met with the fiercest
opposition from the other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point
to the fact that while their patients were dying his were getting well;
and he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and success.
Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by this treatment,
saved not less than six thousand of his patients from death in the
"hundred days." Nevertheless, the medical war went on with great
bitterness, and the opposition to Rush became furious when he boldly
declared that the fever was not an importation from abroad, as was
popularly believed, but had been generated by the filthy condition of
the city during the early part of the summer.
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