or singular revolution is produced or effected in the human body.

This disease is peculiarly incident to people living in flat, low lands, where the heat is intense, partly by the flatness of the surface of the land, and partly from still bodies of water, as by the action of light upon these smooth surfaces, the heat becomes intense, and the circumjacent air is divested of its elasticity, or there is a great deficiency of the natural quantity of this expanding, dilating, vibrating, or stimulating element, we call ethereal fire or electricity.

It hath been abundantly proven before, that this elementary fire is the very criterion of animal life; that in proportion to the degree of the natural quantity, so is the degree of animal life and vigour existing in that quantity.

From the intenseness of heat in those low marshy lands, there is a rapid exhalation of noxious vapour, diffused throughout the circumambient air, which is undoubtedly unfavourable to health; but this, simply considered, doth not lead us to discover, in any philosophical manner, how debility should originate in that source, even that great degree of debility that gives rise to a fit of the ague.

But upon the other principle, it is an obvious result or consequence of a deficiency of this vital stimulus. This will further appear, if we consider that the revolution, as I call it, of an ague, proceeds from a deficiency of energy in the arterial system, in particular. There is an equal degree of debility throughout the whole vascular system; but the ague originates in the deficiency or inability of the heart and arteries to propel on the blood towards the surface: And this languor, we may with propriety conclude, hath its source in a deficiency of the natural insolation, or natural quantity of the elementary stimulating fire: For it is well known that an additional degree of this stimulus, supplied by art, will invigorate and strengthen the circulations, and militate directly against an attack of the ague. Not only so, but the ague is never known to originate in any country of high lands, where the heat is less intense, or where the natural quantity of electricity is not rendered too deficient, by intense rarifaction of long continued heat. (Note 1)

Note 1:
It should be remembered in this place, that it hath been demonstrated, that heath doth divest air of its natural quantity of ethereal fire, or electricity, or that it is highly probable, from the absolute certainty of its producing that effect on other substances, or bodies; such as glass, bees-wax, and some other bodies: which substances, by some unknown transmutation, or configuration of the electric body, are changed into the very substance, as it were, of glass, and constitutes its transparency, its elasticity and brittleness; and is so made up of this very element, that no artificial quantity can be added or approach it, until the natural quantity is first reduced by heat; then it will receive and convey the artificial quantity as freely as water or metal. Bees wax imbibes so great a natural quantity in its cold state, that it is as impervious as glass almost, to the approach or passage of an artificial qauntity; but by being heated, it is as suspectible as water.

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