It seizes the body as if with a violent fever, and from
that turns to a lingering sickness, which reduces the patients to
skeletons, and often kills them if the relations cannot procure
the proper remedy. During this sickness their speech is changed
to a kind of stuttering, which no one can understand but those
afflicted with the same disorder. When the relations find the
malady to be the real tigretier, they join together to defray the
expense of curing it; the first remedy they in general attempt is
to procure the assistance of a learned Dofter, who reads the
Gospel of St. John, and drenches the patient with cold water daily
for the space of seven days, an application that very often proves
fatal. The most effectual cure, though far more expensive than
the former, is as follows:- The relations hire for a certain sum
of money a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a
quantity of liquor; then all the young men and women of the place
assemble at the patient's house to perform the following most
extraordinary ceremony.
"I was once called in by a neighbour to see his wife, a very young
woman, who had the misfortune to be afflicted with this disorder;
and the man being an old acquaintance of mine, and always a close
comrade in the camp, I went every day, when at home, to see her,
but I could not be of any service to her, though she never refused
my medicines.
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