40 Dr. Mac Culloch on Fevers, 



certain districts of England, as well as on the Continent far 

 more conspicuously, an accurate knowledge and discrimi- 

 nation of it must be of the greatest importance. And that 

 importance is perhaps even greatest in the slightest cases, 

 since it is those which have been most thoroughly misappre- 

 hended. Thus he has shown that a fever of this character 

 is often mistaken for mere debility, (a term, he justly remarks, 

 without meaning,) or for a broken-down constitution, (an 

 equally unmeaning phrase,) or, as attended with peculiar 

 local or attached symptoms, for hysteria, dyspepsia, hypo- 

 chondriasis, hectic fever, atrophy, consumption, menstrual 

 diseases, and much more, including all those derangements 

 of mental and bodily health to which the popular but vulgar, 

 unmeaning, and mischievous term 7iervous disease is so widely 

 applied. And as an instance of this nature, he points out, 

 from Hay garth, as well as from his own experience, a state 

 of peculiar debility attended with nervous affections both 

 mental and bodily, to which young persons, and especially 

 young ladies, are subject ; often enduring for j-ears, if with 

 occasional intervals of better health, and exciting much sur- 

 prise, inasmuch as no organic, or scarcely any really assign- 

 able disease is present, while at the same time it is intractable 

 by medicine. This condition he shows to be the very chronic 

 remittent in question; while he proves here, and in other 

 places, that there can be nothing else to account for 

 such a state of things at that age, and where no organic dis- 

 orders exist. And we deduce generally, from this and other 

 chapters, that he considers the far larger portion of what are 

 called nervous diseases occurring in society, to be the nervous 

 symptoms which belong to this fever ; while the proofs are 

 such as to lead to conviction that such is the fact. We need 

 not point out the value of this conclusion to those who know 

 how frequent and how intractable these disorders are, and 

 how currently they are treated by injurious remedies ; since, 

 while such evil practices will thus be corrected, we are led 

 to the true and only methods of cure. 



Hence there is a sort of general conclusion, for the full proofs 

 of which we must refer to the work, as our limits would not 

 permit us to state them ; and it is, that a remittent fever, or 

 that marsh fever, which is so termed, though it be as con- 

 tinuous as typhus ever is, may be a chronic disorder of 

 inveterate and almost endless duration, occupying, in fact, 

 the better part of life. This may be the sequel of a severe 

 and marked remittent, or it may have originally attacked in 

 a mild form : but, while it consists of a series of relapses, 



