Medicine. 27^ 



Among living authors, many have been so justly 

 distinguished for their efforts to improve the theory 

 and treatment of diseases, that it v^ould be inex- 

 cusable to omit their names in this retrospect. 

 Our learned and excellent countryman, Dr. Rush, 

 stands in the first rank of medical theorists in the 

 United States. His doctrine of the proximate 

 cause of fever is the result of a long, vigilant and 

 enlightened attention to the phenomena of febrile 

 diseases, and to the various plans of cure which 

 his extensive learning enabled him to survey. The 

 pathology of the blood-vessels, which had been 

 too much neglected by preceding theorists, seems 

 to have employed a principal share of his attention 

 in framing his doctrine of fevers; which makes 

 their proximate cause consist of a convulsion in the 

 sanguiferous, hut more particularly^ in the arterial 

 system. In conformity to this opinion, his decisive 

 and energetic treatment of febrile diseases is 

 chiefly directed to the reduction of excessive, and 

 the liberation of oppressed action, by depletion, and 

 other analogous means; or to the support of feeble 

 action by appropriate stimulants; and afterwards 

 to the transfer of remaining morbid action, of 

 wdiatever kind, from the vascular system to parts 

 less essential to life.'' 



The inquiries concerning the nature and consti- 

 tution o[ pestilential fluids, which have been pro- 

 secuted with great learning and ingenuity by Dr. 

 MiTCHiLL, so radically concern many of the lead- 

 ing doctrines of diseases, that they may justly be 

 said to embrace a new theory. His doctrine, as 

 was before mentioned, is this, that the acid offspring 

 ot putreiaction, composed of oxygen and azote 

 (which latter he denominates septon) chemically 

 united, forms the febrile poison whose ravages are 



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