AGUAS CALIENTES—A-HULL.
A'GUAS CALIE'NTES, a well-built town in
Mexico, in the province of Zacatecas. It is situated
in N. lat. 21° 53, and W. long. 101° 45, in a plain
6000 feet above the sea-level, and on a stream
of the same name, which is tributary to the Rio
Grande de Santiago. It contains a population of
20,000; and besides the cultivation of fields and
gardens, the manufacture of woollen cloth is very
considerable, and is carried on on the factory system.
The town is favourably situated for trade, as the
great road from Mexico to Sonora and Durango is
here crossed by that from San Louis Potosi to
Guadalaxara. The environs abound in hot springs,
from which the town takes its name.
A'GUE (Febris intermitiens) is the common name
for an intermitting fever, accompanied by paroxysms
or fits. Each fit is composed of three stages; the
cold, the hot, and the sweating stage. Before
a fit, the patient has a sensation of debility and dis-
tress about the epigastrium; feels weak and disin-
clined for exertion ; the surface of his body becomes
cold, and the bloodless skin shrivels up into the con-
dition termed goose-skin (cutis amserina). A cold
sensation creeps up the back, and spreads over the
body ; the patient shivers, his teeth chatter, his knees
knock together; his face, lips, ears, and nails turn
blue ; he has pains in his head, back, and loins.
This condition is succeeded by flushes of heat, the
coldness gives place to warmth, and the surface
regains its natural appearance. The warmth con-
tinues to increase, the face becomes red and turgid,
the head aches, the breathing is deep and oppressed,
the pulse full and strong. The third stage now
comes on; the skin becomes soft and moist, the
pulse resumes its natural force and frequency, and
a copious sweat breaks from the whole body.
These paroxysms recur at regular intervals. The
interval between them is called ‘an intermission.’
When they occur every day, the patient has quo-
tidian A.; every second day, terttan ; and when
they are absent for two days, quartan. All ages
are liable to this disease; and a case is on record
of a pregnant woman having a tertian A. which
attacked her of course every other day; but on
the alternate days, when she was well, she felt that
the child also had A., although the paroxysms did
not coincide with her own.
The exciting causes of this disease are invisible
effluvias from the surface of the earth (marsh mias-
mata). A certain degree of temperature seems
necessary—higher than 60° Fahrenheit—for the
production of the poison. It does not exist within
the Arctic Circle, nor does it appear in the cold
easons of temperate climates, and seldom beyond
the 56° of N. lat. (Watson). It also requires moist-
ure. In England, A. is almost exclusively confined
to the eastern coast ; and the extension of drainage
has rendered agues far more rare than before. James
I and Oliver Cromwell died of A. contracted in
London. The Pontine Marshes to the S. of Rome
have long been notorious as a source of aguish fevers.
Peat bog, or moss, is not productive of malaria, as is
seen in parts of Ireland and Scotland. Neither is
A. ever seen among the inhabitants of the Dismal
Swamp—a moist tract of 150,000 acres on the fron-
tiers of Virginia and North Carolina in North
America.—The treatment of aguish fever consists
generallyin calomel given in purgative doses, followed
by preparations of cinchona-bark, and in applying,
during the paroxysm, external warmth to the body.
AGUE'SSEAU, Hexrr Frangois D', a distin-
guished lawyer and chancellor of France, and pro-
nounced by Voltaire to have been the most learned
magistrate that France ever possessed, was born at
Limoge, 1668 A.D. He received his earliest education
90
from hig father; and afterwards devoted himself to
the study of law, became awocat-général at Paris in
1690, and at the age of thirty-two, procureur-général
of the parliament. In this office, he effected many
improvements in the laws and in the administration
of justice. He displayed great benevolence during a
famine which occurred in the winter of 1709, apply-
ing all the means in his power for the alleviation of
the calamity. As a steady defender of the rights of
the people, and of the Gallican Church, he success-
fully opposed the decrees of Louis XIV. and the
Chancellor Voisin in favour of the papal bull Uni-
genitus (q. v.). During the government of the Duke
of Orleans, he became chancellor; but in the follow-
ing year fell into disgrace by opposing Law’s system
of finance, and retired to his country-seat at Fresnes.
When, however, the ruin induced by Law’s system
produced a general outery of dissatisfaction, A. was
reinstated, in order to appease the people. But his
well-meant efforts could not retrieve the desperate
state of affairs. A. was afterwards exiled a second
time, in consequence of his opposing Cardinal
Dubois; and though he (in 1727) obtained from
Cardinal Fleury permission to return, yet he did not
again resume the office of chancellor till 1737. He
resigned in 1750, and died, Feb. 9, 1751. His works,
consisting of pleadings and speeches at the openings
of the parliament, occupy thirteen volumes (Paris,
1759—1789. Newest edition, Paris, 1819).
AGU'LHAS, CAPE, (meaning Needles), the most
southern point of Africa, lies about 100 miles E.S.E.
of the Cape of Good Hope, in lat. 34° 51’ 8., long.
19° 55’ E. In 1849, a light-house was erected on it,
at an elevation of 52 feet above high-water. The
A. Bank extends along the whole southern coast of
Africa. It is 560 miles in length, and, opposite the
Cape of Good Hope, as many as 200 in breadth.
A'HAB, the son and successor of Omri, was king
of Israel from 918 to 897 B.c. He married Jezebel,
the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon; through
whose injurious influence the Pheenician worship of
Baal was introduced, the king himself seduced to
idolatry, and the priests and prophets of Jehovah
cruelly persecuted. Yet the prophets retained their
influence over the people ; and Elijah dared openly
to attack the priests of Baal, and reprove the
wickedness of the king with the most severe threat-
enings of punishment. A. prosecuted three wars,
with various success, against Benhadad, king of
Syria ; but in the last campaign he was killed by an
arrow. His whole family was afterwards extirpated
under King Jehu.
AHASUE'RUS is the name, or rather, perhaps,
the ftitle, by which several kings of Media and
Persia are mentioned in Scripture. The best known
of these is Esther’s husband (see EsraErr), who is
probably the same as the Persian king Xerxes; the
Hebrew form of his name (Achaschverosch) pointing
to the old Persian form of the name Xerxes
(Khschyfrschan).
A-HULL, a maritime term, used to denote the
position of a ship when all her sails are furled, and
her helm lashed on the lee-side; in such a position,
she lies nearly with her side to the wind, but with the
head turned a little towards the direction of the wind.
It may be convenient to mention in this place
that the phraseology adopted by British naval
officers and seamen, whether belonging to the royal
navy or to the mercantile marine, comprises a large
number of words formed on a principle similar to
that of akead, with the vowel a (a corruption of the
Anglo-Saxon preposition on, meaning on, in, at) pre-
fixed to a noun. Such are the following: A4back,
abaft, aboard, abreast, a-cockbill, adrift, afloat, afore,
aground, ohead, a-hull, a-lee, alofl, aloof, amain,
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