44 Dr. Mac Culloch on Fevers. 



was specifically writing ; and we are unable to contradict 

 him, while it does not say much in praise of the writers, or 

 rather, as is but too true of almost all medical books, the 

 compilere of these works. Hence also he observes^ that no 

 English practitioner is prepared for such a cause of apoplexy 

 or palsy, while he refers to numerous cases of it in his own 

 practice, where a complete recovery took place, and in a 

 very short time, by merely doing nothing ; while he equally 

 alludes to numerous ones, where, from mistaking the disease 

 for ordinary apoplexy or palsy, it became mortal or incu- 

 rable. We can easily deduce further, that he holds those 

 diseases, if produced from this cause, as trivial, inasmuch as 

 easily curable ; while he says decidedly, in more places than 

 one, not only that they are rendered incurable by the 

 common and blind practice of blood-letting, but that such 

 practice, now unfortunately in vogue, is the common cause 

 of the palsies met with every day in society. And it is 

 plain that he considers the palsies of young people, in parti- 

 cular, to be of this variety, and the evil to be the result of 

 medical ignorance. We need not say that these remarks 

 are no less important than they are original ; and we wish 

 that we could contradict what unfortunately a review of 

 what has fallen under our own observation now shows us to 

 be but too true. We have dwelt so much on this fact, 

 however, that we must pass over much more as to inter- 

 mittent, of less novelty ; that we may give a sketch of the 

 remaining " simulations and anomalies" of intermittents (as 

 they are here termed), the account of which occupies the 

 seventh chapter. 



We remarked already, from the work, that these varieties 

 had been partly noticed under remittent : but the account 

 here is much more full and detailed ; while this chapter 

 constitutes one of the most important portions of the book. 

 And in this case he does not rest so entirely on his own 

 observations as in many other parts ; as he has produced 

 abundant evidences from foreign authors, and principally 

 from Strack, as to the existence of these anomalies and 

 simulations ; though he is the first writer who appears to 

 have seen their value, as he is the first who has brought 

 them together in a systematical form, and under one leading 

 principle. 



These anomalies and simulations occur when, in addition 

 to the simple fever, there is some local symptom of an 

 adventitious nature, such as the palsy and apoplexy just 

 described, or such as inflammations in noted organs, as in 



