ked the patient immediately after the sitz-bath
and left him two hours in the pack, where he slept almost all the time.
When he awoke, he complained again of pain in his head, which partly
yielded to the half-bath. About three hours after the bath, he
complained more of the pain in his head and spine, and I repeated the
sitz-bath and the pack. He slept in the pack for about three hours, and
when I took him out, he was covered with red spots. Feeling pretty well,
he was dressed and permitted to stay up. In the forenoon, my friend
called to see whether our patient were still living, and could hardly
believe his own eyes when, on cautiously putting his head in at the
door, he saw the boy walking up and down the room to warm his feet. In
the afternoon, the pain returned and the rash faded. I repeated the
pack, and the pain not yielding entirely, I gave him one more sitz-bath
in the evening and a pack after it, in which he stayed asleep almost all
the time, nearly four hours, upon which the rash stood out finely and
never disappeared until desquamation set in. I managed to keep him in
bed after the relapse mentioned, till desquamation was over. I need
scarcely say that I continued to pack him (twice a day) till after
desquamation, when the packs were given once a day for about a week
longer. On the seventeenth day (which was the fifteenth with the younger
boy, who had the fever in a very mild form, and was treated accordingly)
the two scarlet-convalescents were seen playing in the street, throwing
snowballs at each other; a fact, which increased not a little the
sensation caused by this miraculous cure. Although my friend was not
converted to the new method, this case had a very decided encouraging
influence upon myself, and, I am convinced, became the means of
salvation for many hundred lives afterwards, treated partly by myself
directly, partly by other physicians, or the parents of the patients,
after my prescriptions. I felt the importance of my success in this
difficult case of scarlatina, and warmly thanked Providence for having
assisted me in saving my child for the benefit of many others.[35]

96. The circumstance that, at the same time my two boys were taken sick
with scarlatina, a servant of mine became afflicted with _small-pox_, my
daughter with _varioloids_, and my mother and wife with _influenza_,
afforded me an ample opportunity of trying the effects of the
water-cure and my own courage and skill in the new m