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Alcohol, Guaiacum, and other powerful stimulants, produce their effects by merely accelerating the circulation; but in employing such remedies for the purpose of exciting sweat, we must be careful to adapt them to the circumstances of the case, and to the degree of action which prevails. In all febrile diseases attended with much increased heat, or connected with local inflammation, diaphoretics of this description must be very cautiously administered, for by accelerating the circulation they might counteract any benefit which they would otherwise confer by relaxing the vessels of the skin. In the whole history of medical opinions there is scarcely a theory which has proved so fatal in its practical applications as that maintained by Van Helmont, and his disciples, viz. that acute diseases were to be cured by expelling some morbific matter, after its proper concoction—a theory which suggested the administration of the most stimulating sudorifics, together with high temperature^[164] in every grade of febrile exacerbation. The fatal effects of such a practice during the seventeenth, and early parts of the eighteenth centuries, are incalculable, and may be very satisfactorily contrasted with the beneficial results which have accrued, in the same diseases, in the present age, from the use of diaphoretics of the refrigerant kind.