96 ON THE THEORY OF HEALTH, 



bles. If at this stage the cold is removed, the fever will 

 disappear; but if the disease (the cold) has been allowed to 

 advance until a general derangement or sympathetic action 

 is set up, and there is an accumulation of morbific matter in 

 the system, then the restorative process must be more power- 

 ful and energetic ; constantly bearing in mind that we must 

 assist Nature in her endeavors to throw off whatever is the 

 cause of her infirmities. Instead of attacking the disease 

 with the lancet, and poison, — which is on the principle of 

 killing the horse to cure the fever, — we should use remedies 

 that are favorable to life. It matters not what organs are 

 affected ; the means and processes are the same, and therefore 

 the division of inflammation and fever into a great number of 

 parts designated by as many names, and indicated by twenty 

 times as many complications of symptoms which may never 

 be present, only serve to bewilder the practitioner, and render 

 his practice ineffectual, or, as Dr. Bigelow calls it in human 

 practice, "learned quackery. 1 '' We have said, fever and 

 inflammation are one and the same thing ; when the fever is 

 confined to a small space, it is called inflammation. " Inflam- 

 mation is rather an effort of nature than a disease." (Hunter, 

 vol. iv. p. 293.) 



As inflammation is an action produced for the restoration of 

 the most simple injury in sound parts, which goes beyond the 

 power of union by what is termed first intention, we must 

 look upon it, in such instances, as one of the most simple 

 operations in nature. Therefore inflammation in itself is not 

 to be considered a disease, but a salutary operation consequent 

 to either violence or disease. (Ibid. vol. iv. p. 285.) Hence, 

 when men cease to consider, and to call fever and inflammation 

 " diseased action," they will begin to learn to heal disease 

 aright, and not till then. 



Dr. White writes thus: "Though horses and other domes- 

 tic animals are liable to fever, there is not that variety in the 

 disease, nor is it by any means so intricate as it is in the human 

 subject. Some practitioners do not admit the existence of fever 

 in the horse, as a primary disorder, but consider it as symp- 



