CHAPTER XXV 



FEVER 



IN concluding our study of metabolism this last chapter 

 may with propriety be devoted to the old and, to the thought- 

 ful physician, the daily recurring enigma of fever, with dis- 

 cussion of the attitude assumed by modern biochemistry 

 toward this problem. 



Customarily such a discussion should begin with a sober 

 presentation of a number of definitions relating to the gen- 

 eral concept of fever ; but this may well be dispensed with, 

 because the author believes that those whom he is address- 

 ing all realize what is meant by the term, and because, too, 

 he has never quite grasped why scientists so often burden 

 life with insistence upon definitions of things whose real 

 nature they themselves are unable to sharply and clearly 

 depict. 



Total Metabolism. The naive concept of a man 

 "fever raging through his veins" approaches the idea 

 that "an internal fire," whose mildly tempered warmth 

 under normal conditions protects the body from chill, is 

 being fanned into a wild consuming flame. We may there- 

 fore begin by determining whether and to what extent we 

 are justified in assuming in fever the existence of an ex- 

 aggeration of the vital combustion processes. 1 



The idea of exaggeration of combustion processes in 

 fever, which dominated the older pathology, was first dis- 

 turbed by Senator, who was able to point out that in ex- 

 perimentally infected febrile animals it is not necessary 

 that invariably and under all circumstances there be more 



1 Literature upon the Total Metabolism in Fever : A. Jaquet, Ergebn. d. 

 Physiol., 2', 548-553, 1903; C. Speck, ibid., 31-35; Fr. Kraus: Noorden's Handb. 

 d. Pathol. d. Stoffw., 1, 614-630, 1906; L. Krehl, Pathol. Physiol., 5th Ed., 

 482-485, 1907; A. Lowy, Handb. d. Biochem., 4' 199-213, 242-243, 1908; P. F. 

 Richter, ibid., 4", 105-112, 1910; Graham Lusk, Ernahrung und Stoffwechsel, 

 2nd Ed., 287-293, 1910. 

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