RESEARCHES UPON FEVER. 



By H. C. Wood, Jr., M. D., of Philadelphia. 



The following is a brief analysis of the argument and results, so far 

 as reached, of the researches upon fever, which have occupied my atten- 

 tion for some years, and towards which the Smithsonian Institution has so 

 liberally contributed pecuniary aid. This article, however, affords noth- 

 ing more than the barest outline of the work done ; many minor points 

 and discovered facts are altogether omitted, and no allusion is made 

 to the work of other persons. The extended memoir awaiting publica- 

 tion by the Institution will contain all necessary historical matters and 

 any proper acknowledgment of jirevious investigations. It may be 

 allowable here to state that, excejit in the chemical section, showing the 

 agreement between my results on heat production, and studies on the 

 same subject, made by calculating ingesta and egesta, no experimental 

 results previously arrived at by other observers have been accepted 

 without thorough repetition and verification. 



The first effort, naturally, was to determine if fever be as complex as 

 it seems, or whether there be not some dominant symptom which is the 

 characteristic one of the process. By artificially heating living animals 

 both throughout the whole body and in local regions, such as the head, 

 it was clearly shown that elevation of the bodily temperature is suflicient 

 to produce all the nervous and circulatory symptoms of fever, and that 

 the cooling of the heated part is capable of removing the symptoms. 

 Parallel exj)eriments made upon man in simple thermic and other 

 fevers gave j^arallel results to those reached in the lower animals, and 

 warrant the conclusion that the dominant symptom of fever is the 

 excessive bodily temperature. Fever may therefore be defined to be a 

 morbid process which produces elevation of the bodily temperature. The 

 question that naturally presents itself at this point is — Is the increase 

 of the bodily temperature due to an increase of the amount of heat pro- 

 duced, or is it caused by a failure of the body to throw off" its heat? As, 

 however, the study of normal i)hysiology naturally precedes that of mor- 

 bid physiology, and as our knowledge of the methods in which nature 

 regulates the production and evolution of bodily heat is very scanty, 

 it seemed proper before proceeding farther with the researches upon 

 fever to endeavor to elucidate the laws which govern the production or 

 evolution of animal heat in health. 



420 



