Dr. Mac Culloch on Fevers. 43 



of a removal from the ever-exciting cause, an accurate 

 knowledge of the soils or places productive of malaria, 

 becomes indispensable to every physician. 



We cannot afford room to analyse the fifth chapter, 

 which treats of dysentery and cholera — slightly, but suffi- 

 ciently for the purposes in view. These are, chiefly, to show 

 that the latter disease, as well as the former, is the produce 

 of malaria : but we must refer to the work itself for the 

 arguments. 



The sixth chapter treats of intermittent fever ; but, like 

 the first, passes over slightly whatever is best known and 

 already described, to dwell on errors and obscurities. But 

 as we omitted a most important fact by passing over the 

 chapter on common remittent, we must state it here, since it 

 is one that occurs under each mode of marsh fever, and 

 appears totally unknown to English practitioners, or, at least, 

 entirely neglected by them. We must condense into one 

 place what the author's plan has obliged him to separate. 



It frequently happens that the marsh fever, whether its 

 type is to be remittent or intermittent, attacks like a fit of 

 apoplexy ; and this is common in Italy, under the term 

 febhre larvata* We might consider this as a merely aggra- 

 vated coma ; and so in certain cases it appears to be, since 

 the patient recovers perfectly from it after a certain number 

 of hours — its place being that which would otherwise be the 

 cold fit. But it is either not so, essentially, or is not always 

 so simple : because it sometimes terminates in palsy, hemi- 

 plegia or paraplegia, or, perhaps, in an aff*ection more 

 limited; more particularly if evacuations are used. More- 

 over, the attack is sometimes that of a palsy only, and this 

 under the several forms just described. Hence it is, according 

 to our author, that palsy is often brought on in labouring 

 people, even in our own country, by sleeping on the ground ; 

 a fact far more common in Italy, and especially in the 

 insalubrious districts. Elsewhere, in confirmation of this, 

 he remarks, that the application of a certain gas to the eye 

 will produce amaurosis ; while, as to palsy, the immediate 

 consequence of malaria, we can confirm his observations by 

 an interesting fact falling under our own notice, where, on 

 the opening of a water-cask, a naval officer was immediately 

 struck down in an apoplexy, which terminated in an incurable 

 hemiplegia. 



Now he makes some important remarks on this leading- 

 fact. First, he says, that no one English author on palsy 

 has noticed this among the causes of the disease on which he( 



