528 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



plications, especially whenever the diseases are epidemic; in 

 sporadic cases it may be more difficult. 



" Proper fever is also combined with the Exanthemata. Thus 

 the fever frequently depends upon a contagion, arid the erup- 

 tion appears during the fever, as in the smallpox and measles. 

 But there are cases where it is supposed that certain exanthem- 

 ata are produced merely in consequence of a state of fever, in- 

 dependent of any peculiar specific contagion, as in the case of 

 Petechiae, or the eruptions which come out in some fevers, and 

 which we do not admit into the number of the exanthemata. 

 There are miliary eruptions, too, which are to be considered in 

 the same light ; these, indeed, sometimes depend upon a spe- 

 cific contagion, but more commonly they are merely symptom- 

 atic." 



LXXIV. Most of our systems of physic have marked, as a 

 primary one, a species of fever under the title of HECTIC ; but 

 as it is described, I have never seen it as a primary disease. I 

 have constantly found it as a symptom of some topical affection, 

 most commonly of an internal suppuration, and as such it shall 

 be considered in another place. 



LXXV. The distinction of the several cases of intermittent 

 fever I have not prosecuted here ; both because we cannot as- 

 sign the causes of the differences which appear, and because I 

 apprehend that the differences which in fact occur may be 

 readily understood from what is said above (XXV., XXVI., 

 and XXVII.), and more fully from our methodical Nosology, 

 cl. i. ord. i. sect. 1. 



" The TERTIAN is the most universal of all the forms of in- 

 termittent fevers ; it occurs in nine out of ten cases, nay, it may 

 be considered as the fundamental and most natural form of 

 fevers. I have defined it thus : Paroxysmi similes intervallo 

 quadraginta octo circiter horarum : Accessionibus meridianis/ 

 In this definition I differ from Sauvages and Linnaeus, whose 

 { tertio quovis die' is somewhat ambiguous. Thus, in common 

 language, we would say that a Tertian returns every second day, 

 but in medical language, the first day in which the disease be- 

 gins is also reckoned ; so when a Tertian begins on Monday, 

 the fit returns on Wednesday. But as these expressions lead 

 to ambiguity, I have, in my character, mentioned the interval 



