40 Dr. Mac Culloch on Malaria on Ship-board, 



tude at large. The influence of terms forms one of the most 

 curious departments of the history of the human mind, and is 

 the foundation of more fallacies than all else which that history 

 can furnish. As long as the term in use was fever, simply, the 

 disease might have been any fever; and it was then the busi- 

 ness of the physician to ascertain what it was, whether it was 

 a marsh fever or a contagious one. But the term typhus once 

 adopted, became the substitute for examination and reasoning 

 alike, as it became also the rule of practice : the association of 

 ideas led necessarily to contagion ; and hence unquestionably 

 one leading cause of the rapid growth and progress of this 

 error : an error which will not soon be eradicated, and may not 

 possibly be entirely corrected until some change of the general, 

 and particularly of the popular nomenclature takes place. 



As a proof of this popular and general error, it is sufficient 

 to open any monthly journal or inspect any newspaper, where 

 we read currently of the prevalence of typhus " in this month," 

 August and September, for example, and how " in this month," 

 November, the number of cases is gradually diminishing. And 

 these are the reports of physicians holding public situations in 

 hospitals, from whom, if from any, we are entitled to expect 

 more correct notions ; particularly when they set up to be the 

 recorders of medical statistics, to descend, possibly, to posterity, 

 and corrupt the entire history of medicine. If it is from such 

 authorities as these that Heberden and others have drawn their 

 averages and deductions, we may well be cautious how we 

 reason on them. 



I am aware that more correct notions have for some little 

 time begun to take place of this extensive error ; but physi- 

 cians know as well as I do that they are still very limited — so 

 limited, that among men of any reputation, it would not be 

 very difficult to point out the individual. They know, too, that 

 such correct views, although promulgated by teachers, have 

 very little effect on the general opinion and practice at present; 

 and it is such teachers who will best know that in the Essay on 

 Malaria, and in that on Marsh Fever, I have not overrated 

 either the error or the evil, strongly as I may have pointed 

 it out. 



But if I have thus pointed out this most common and widely 



