480 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



BOOK I. OF FEVERS. 



CHAP. I.-^-OF THE PHENOMENA OF FEVERS. 



VIII. Those diseases are more strictly called Fevers which 

 have the general symptoms of pyrexia, without having along 

 with them any topical affection that is essential and primary, 

 such as the other orders of the Pyrexiae always have. 



" The ' pulsus frequens,' of the moderns, which they have 

 made the sole character of the pyrexia, or the 6 calor major,' which 

 was the sole character of the ancients, is not sufficient to con- 

 stitute a disease of this class ; and they only do so when these 

 symptoms accompany horror, and more or less of debility. 

 Such is the description of fever in every book, and I would not 

 need to have insisted upon it, were it not for an observation of 

 Boerhaave's, that the horripilatio is confined to diseases from in- 

 ternal causes, while the other symptoms are universal, so that, 

 according to him, there is a hot fit which is not preceded by a 

 cold one. But here to apply a general rule, I say that a fever of 

 this sort does not occur once in ten thousand times. It is pos- 

 sible, that merely violence of exercise and excessive heat may 

 bring on a fever without any excessive horror ; but even in such 

 cases I have always observed that the horror did take place be- 

 fore any permanent fever came on ; and if it does not, in no 

 case does the fever come on, unless there is some topical affec- 

 tion, some congestion which is the cause of inflammation. 

 And however we may speak in common language with respect 

 to our being in a fever, upon many occasions this has been 

 owing to the mistake of physicians with respect to its nature ; 

 and the character must remain as it stands, that the horror is 

 universally the prelude to all kinds of fever. 



" The term Pyrexia has no word of the same import in our 

 language, but it has been common to apply the term Fever in 

 the same extensive way. Thus, in common language, we say 

 that the smallpox is a fever ; but I only call one order of the 



