Dr. Mac Cullocli on Fevers, 37 



sciences which he cultivates ; namely, to collect and arrange 

 facts under some general principle, to trace analogies, not in 

 words but in realities, to balance and purify evidence, and, 

 from the generalizations thus formed, to extend conclusions 

 to other facts and analogies, we recognize the true logic of 

 science, and the spirit of the modern philosophy : while, if we 

 cannot help thinking that he neither could nor would have 

 done this, had he not been a cultivator of science at large, so 

 do we agree with him, that the fault of physicians, as writers 

 respecting their own science, has been the neglect of a 

 general scientific education, a want of knowledge and prac- 

 tice in those sciences which are comparatively accurate ones, 

 of that through which alone any one science can be effectually 

 cultivated ; since there is not one that can stand upon its own 

 foundation, nor be pursued to any purpose, excepjt through 

 the aid of many others, and through a general habitude with 

 philosophical investigations. 



How far the author has acted on this principle, and what 

 the results have been, will be best judged from that portion of 

 the work which treats of Neuralgia. Here it was that the 

 utmost confusion existed, as we shall hereafter show ; and 

 it is here that, by the adoption of one general principle 

 derived from facts, and its application to the phenomena of a 

 great variety of diseases formerly judged separate and inde- 

 pendent, he has been enabled to bring these under one 

 generic form and one general cause ; with the valuable prac- 

 tical consequences of rendering them, for ever hereafter, not 

 onlyintelligible, but recognizable under whatever obscurities, 

 and with the ultimate result, the end of all medical investi- 

 gation, that of applying to them one general method of cure. 

 This portion of the Essay, in particular, presents an im- 

 portant example of what medicine can do by adopting the 

 machinery of science ; and the consequences are perhaps 

 most conspicuous in the novel arrangement of two most com- 

 mon disorders, Ophthalmia and Tooth-ach: the results of 

 which, in practice, cannot also fail to be most important. If 

 in the portion which relates to Fevers, the scientific train of 

 proceeding is less conspicuous, the results, as well as the 

 processes, are similar : since here also a great number of 

 disorders v/hich were, similarly, judged of an independent 

 nature, and, as such, improperly treated by physicians, are 

 hown to be but symptoms of the one generic disease, Marsh 

 fever, or variations of its varieties ; while the utility thence 

 derived will be found in the numerous reforms projDOsed as 

 to the treatment. It is true that, in our review of his Essay 



