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give me leave once more to trouble you with some further account of our patient Mrs
Woodcocks case, tho hitherto our best endeavours have availed her very little yet we indulge our
selves in the pleasing thoughts that the nature of her complaints appear to be now better under¬
stood than heretofore, tho' the cause of them is very equivocal, if therefore our conjectures
are better founded, we may reasonably conclude that a chance for relief is the more probable;
from a careful & diligent attention to every little incident attending her both in the intervals
of a fitt & in the convulsion we now entirely coincide with your first opinion wch: is that there
is no topical affection of the brain & that the symptoms depend upon a more general affection of
the nervous system, but how or in what manner this affection is produced & from what cause
it is brought on, is the question, from the constant & equal feelings such as nausea sickness &c
she has had in her stomach connected with the uneasiness in her head we are induced to con¬
clude that the organs of digestion are principally in fault & the other parts by consent only, tho
tis well known that the brain can affect the stomach, & vice versa, but Dr: Fothergill after he
had seen her this summer was inclined to suppose that the principal leading cause of all
was the sudden loss of the menses about two years ago & more especially so as she had
had many children & both in the intervals of child bearing & after that time she had
generally very large discharges of them; with this view he directed her to loose a few ounces
of blood three or four times in the year but particularly so when she found herself warmer
than usual or troubled with flushings in the face, to keep her belly constantly soluble & once in a week
to take a smart purge combined with so much of the antimonial wine as to puke her Two or
three times & every day to take a stomach draught not so much with the view of encreasing
her appetite as to strengthen her stomach, it was prepared w:th Aq: Menth: pip: simp; Vin:
Chalybeat & Elix: Vitrioli acid & to use as constant exercise on horseback daily as the
weather & other circumstances would admit of, in this course she has continued about two
months without any seeming advantage except that she was always much sunk & debilitated
by ye. purge & tho' it generally puked her two or three times it did not seem either to relieve
{illeg} to prevent her nausea & sickness, or swimming & giddiness of the head but on the contrary
{illeg} in the course the alterative medicines happend to give her a stool or two extraordinary
{illeg} were more frequent we have ever observed that {illeg} more {illeg}
{illeg}e is in meats & drinks the worse she is; she is now taking the Vin Aloet Alcalin::
{illeg}s an alternative & [Flor: Zinzii?] as ↑a↑ stomachic, & whenever she finds herself oppress'd at
her stomach, or troubled with nausea or sickness or colder than usual to take immedi¬
atly a vomit of Vitriol: Alb:, we can fairly say that she has experienced a more substan¬
[tial?] relief from the use of Vomits both in the fitts & proceding them than from all
other medicines whatsoever, many times to all appearance when the fitt has been
coming on her very rapidly she has experiences immediate relief from a dose of Ipec:
particularly so in the last convulsions she had, she had been convulsed when I saw her

Dr: Pemberton presents his most respectful compts: to you

To D:r Cullen