Dr. Mac CuUoch on Malaria on Ship-board, 55 



rally, or rather universally, overlooked ; why it did not explain, 

 at all times, to every physician, the real nature of these low 

 or nervous fevers, explanatory, or rather demonstrative, as it 

 is. And it is not less remarkable, that it is a very common 

 event in those extremely short fevers which have been called 

 inflammatory fever, as I shall presently notice. It did not 

 require this, among other examples of neglect, to prove how 

 very mechanically physic is generally practised ; what an utter 

 routine it is in the hands of the great majority ; how the mass 

 follows whatever schools have taught or fashion may dictate, 

 without inquiry or reflection. If any physician will watch 

 these fevers when they are diminishing or terminating, he will 

 generally find that the disorder assumes a distinct intermittent 

 character ; slight enough, it is true, as an intermittent fever, but 

 still having a due proportion to the original continued one — 

 exactly that proportion, in reality, which a regular and marked 

 intermittent does to the remittent marsh fever, of which it is 

 the representative, or the progress. This in itself is a proof of 

 the nature of the first or original disorder ; for it is most cer- 

 tain that the contagious fever, or typhus, is not convertible into 

 intermittent, and does not terminate in this manner. That this 

 has been supposed, I know ; but it is only a continuation of 

 the same general error — the original error of mistaking marsh 

 fever for typhus — of mistaking the cases in question. 



I do not say that this slender intermittent, as the termination 

 or subsidence of a slender low fever, is not obscure ; but I do 

 say that every physician ought to be able to perceive it, while I 

 have little doubt that, having thus been pointed out, they will 

 be able to do so hereafter. And it is somewhat remarkable, 

 while not unamusing, to observe, that it is perpetually cured 

 by a sort of fashion or routine practice, while the prac- 

 titioner himself does not perceive what he is doing ; not very 

 well knowing, indeed, what he intended to do by his prescrip- 

 tions. I allude to the practice of administering bark, " bark 

 draughts," after such fevers, and in what is deemed the con- 

 valescent state, on the general and mechanical notion of remov- 

 ing debility by tonics ; the word debility and the term tonic 

 having pretty nearly the same meaning — namely, no meaning 

 at all. The cure, in this case, is not that of either convales- 



