10 THE TONER LECTURES. 



sciousness, and in three minutes bad sense enough to attempt 

 to get out of the tub. What could the bath do to affect the 

 man so much but withdraw the heat, which, as you know, we 

 have found to be a poison to the nervous system ? That the 

 heat was withdrawn, the thermometer proved. If the drowsi- 

 ness had been due to simple congestion of the brain, ver}^ cer- 

 tainly would the bath, by driving the blood from the surface, 

 have increased the trouble. 



It must be borne in mind that this case is by no means 

 unparalleled ; similar instances of the good effects of the sud- 

 den withdrawal of heat in rheumatic hyperexia have been 

 reported by both English and German observers, and recent 

 Continental literature is full of reports of the relief of nervous 

 symptoms in various pyrexias by the abstraction of heat. 



These cases, when taken in connection with the parallel ex- 

 periments upon the lower animals, establish to my mind with 

 absolute certainty the truth of the third proposition. 



We have found, then, that excessive heat is present in fever ; 

 that this excessive heat, when present, not only is able to, but 

 is forced, so to speak, by its own attributes, to produce dis- 

 turbance of the functions of innervation and circulation, and 

 that the withdrawal of the excessive heat in fever is followed 

 by instantaneous relief of the symptoms of disturbed innerya- 

 tion and circulation ; surely the conclusion is logically inevi- 

 table, that excessive temperature is the cause of the other 

 symptoms of fever — that it is the essential portion ; that fever 

 and excessive bodily temperature are sj-nonj'mous. 



It is evident that the increase in the amount of caloric in 

 the body during fever can only occur through a lessened giving 

 off of heat by the body, or by an increased production of heat 

 in the body. Had not so great an authority as Traube (AJIge- 

 meine Cent. Zeitung, 1863) espoused the theory that the eleva- 

 tion of temperature in the febrile state is due to increased 

 retention rather than increased production of heat, it would 



