248 Dr Fuster on the Diseases of France 



a mean between the inflammatory and catarrhal diseases, have 

 their paroxysms and most common invasion towards mid-day. 

 Their paroxysms approximate more nearly, whether in the 

 morning or at night, according as the sthenic or asthenic dia- 

 thesis is more predominant. 



The accessions of intermittent fevers commence most fre- 

 quently during the day. It would be sufficiently difficult to 

 cite many of such invasions during the night. 



The slow fever which accompanies large internal suppura- 

 tions has its exacei'bations in the evening, and it is during the 

 night that patients are most tormented by them. The symp- 

 tomatic sweats shew themselves almost exclusively in the 

 morning, a little before the dawn. 



Ramazzini, in his liecitde la Constitution epidemique of 1690, 

 describes an ataxique* remittent fever, all the symptoms of 

 which took a very alarming intensity on the approach of sunset. 

 The patients were cruelly tormented all the night ; one would 

 have thought they were going to yield their last sigh. In the 

 morning, with the first rays of the sun, all these symptoms 

 ceased, and the patients could rise, go out, and walk about 

 without assistance, in the sun ; like snakes erect, enjoying the 

 .solar beams, tu-e the words of the author.t 



Huxam, in his beautiful Treatise on Angina Maligna, the 

 angina gangraenosa so frequent in England, has well remark- 

 ed, tliat tliis malady, during its whole course, presents its ex- 

 acerbations in the evening. He also adds that, when the pa- 

 tients are very well all the day, remarkable aggravations of 

 all the symptoms take place in the evening. 



We resist, with regret, the desire of farther multiplying 

 these citations, eager as we are to present to the Academy an 

 approximation which has lately occurred to us between this 

 order of facts and the valuable discovery of M. Daguerre. 

 Doubt is the school of truth ; hence it is so useful in the sciences ; 

 it is only in the dubitative form that we wish to hazard these 

 approximations. 



'' When tlie prevailing symptoms in fever indicate derangement of the 

 nervous system, pervigilium, restlessness, tremors, or spasms, &c. the name 

 of Ficere AtaHque is given to it by recent French authors, corresponding to 

 the nervous or brain fever in this country Edit. 



t Constit. Epidem... 16!)0, § 10, p. 120, and § 39, p. 143. 



