56 Dr. Mac Culloch on Malaria on Ship-board. 



cence or debility ; it is, very simply, the cure of an intermit- 

 tent ; and thus also does change of air, as it is called, restore 

 such patients, after long dragging on under what is called 

 convalescence — on the same principle as it cures a marked 

 intermittent fever, and, not seldom, by removing the patient 

 from the original and perpetually-renewing cause of the dis- 

 ease. Such protracted convalescence, extremely common, 

 not only after these slight cases, but after all fevers, is always, 

 in fact, an intermittent, though never observed, and, perhaps, 

 overlooked, partly because the original disorder was mistaken ; 

 and I need not say how valuable this view, and a greater cor- 

 rectness in distinguishing contagious from marsh fever, will 

 become in practice, particularly when it is recollected to what 

 an indefinite time the debility, often of mind as well as body, 

 is frequently protracted, and how often, I am sorry to say, 

 very injurious positive practices, to say nothing of neglect, are 

 resorted to under false views of the nature of the evil. And I 

 have little doubt, that while the supposed utility of bark in 

 contagious fevers has been grounded on the great and. common 

 error which forms the fundamental object of these remarks, so 

 have the interminable disputes on this subject proceeded from 

 the fact, that some of the disputers have been treating the 

 marsh fever, without being aware of it, while others have been, 

 under equal confusion, referring to the true typhus, the conta- 

 gious disease. 



In illustrating at some length, but not more than was neces- 

 sary, the mild or nervous fever, and in explaining that the 

 typhus mitior of nosology is generally, or commonly, the 

 marsh fever, or a modification of remittent, I have left little to 

 say as to the only other fevers which require some explanation 

 on the same ground. 



The first of these is the synochus, of Cullen's nosology. I 

 do not pretend to doubt that a contagious typhus fever may 

 commence with one class of symptoms, and terminate with 

 another. But for a marsh fever to commence with what are 

 called inflammatory symptoms, and to proceed to, and termi- 

 nate with the reverse, is so extremely common, that I must, at 

 least, suspect that a very large proportion of the cases esteemed 

 synochus have really been instances of this fever. And that, 



