Medicine. 269. 



they may vary from such as are habitually applied 

 to produce due excitement, they can only weaken- 

 the system by urging it into too much motion, or 

 suffering it to sink into languor. He is supposed 

 to have included both the nervous and muscular 

 powers under the term of excitability ; yet he did 

 not consider the excitability as a property residing 

 in and depending upon the mechanism of particu- 

 lar parts, but as an uniform, undivided property, 

 pervading the whole system, which cannot be 

 affected in any one without being affected in a 

 similar manner in every other part. 



Dr. Brown supposes the proximate cause of 

 fever to consist in debility, which may be either 

 direct or indirect, according to the nature of the 

 noxious powers previously applied to the system. 

 Hence he makes two divisions of fevers: 1st. 

 Those which depend on direct debility, such as 

 intermittent fevers, typhus, &c. 2d. Those which 

 depend on indirect debility, such as malignant 

 fever, confluent small-pox, plague, &;c. Having 

 therefore assigned to fever its place in his series of 

 descending excitement, he neglected particularly 

 to inquire into its symptoms, or to enlarge on its 

 treatment. Thus debility, which was the first link 

 in the chain of Dr. Cullen, formed, according to 

 the theory of Dr. Brown, the essence of fever. 

 He altogether denied the existence of spasm; he 

 ridiculed re-action and the vis medicatrix naturce ; 

 and he wholly overlooked the phenomena of mor- 

 bid association and morbid heat. 



In a word, the basis of Dr. Brown's system 

 seems to be this; in whatever state of the body, 

 ivhether healthy or diseased, there always exists 

 either too strong or too weak an excitement. 

 Hence there can be only two species of disease, 

 two methods of treatment, and two kinds of me- 

 dicinal agents. 



