Dr. Mac Calloch on Fevers, S# 



while it appears that our author had long since classed it as 

 he has here done, and treated it on the general principles ap- 

 plied to all the neuralgia?. Recently, it has been distinguished 

 under the term rheumatism of the eye, by Mr. Wardrop: 

 but we cannot agree with our author that this writer 

 deserves any very great praise for his essay, when he did not 

 discover so very obvious a connection, and while also entirely 

 overlooking the chronic and far most prevailing variety: since 

 excepting a practice in the acuter cases which is merely em- 

 pirical, he has left the matter pretty much where he found 

 it, and has scarcely aided in diminishing the vast mass of evil 

 consequences, in blindness chiefly, which are its daily produce. 

 That it should so have been overlooked and mistaken by 

 the whole profession, by the entire centuries of physic ever 

 since Hippocrates, might appear perfectly incredible, com- 

 mon as it IS and marked as are its characters ; did we not 

 know but too well, as our somewhat satirical author justly 

 remarks, what the proceedings of physic and physicians have 

 been during those centuries. 



Our author states this as being the most common of all the 

 varieties of ophthalmia ; and we are inclined to believe that 

 he is correct in this. It is an endemic in the same situations 

 as marsh fever, very notedly in France, Spain, Italy and 

 Africa ; it prevails in the same seasons of the year and periods, 

 and is most abundant in those in which malaria is most 

 active ; from all which, as far as community of causes goes, 

 its connection with remittent or marsh fever is established. 

 Its nature is more fully proved by the following facts. It is 

 attended by an intermittent fever of the usual character, and 

 very generally by a distinct neuralgic pain about the fore- 

 head or eyebrow : it is also itself intermitting, so as to sub- 

 side and be renewed again in regular paroxysms modelled 

 on all the several types of intermittent ; while, even more 

 remarkably, it is apt to pass alternately from one eye to 

 another, with great regularity, and under a quotidian or 

 tertian type, and while more frequently occupying one eye 

 than both. As a further proof of its true nature, it is 

 aggravated by the evacuating system, and cured by the tonic 

 one ; so that nothing is wanting to the proof of its real cha- 

 racter and connections, even to this, that a partial or more 

 complete palsy of the retina or nerve, namely the loss of 

 vision after sunset, or absolute amaurosis, is one of its con- 

 sequences. 



As we cannot indulge in a further description of this 



