DICTIONARY OF THE VETERINARY ART. 231 



all obstructions to ordinary and proper action. The reason 

 why veterinary practitioners have not ascertained this fact 

 heretofore is, because they have been guided by the false prin- 

 ciple that fever is disease. Let them but receive the truth of 

 the definition we have given, then the light will begin to 

 shine, and medical darkness will be rendered more visible. 



Fever, we have said, is an effort of the vital power to 

 regain its equilibrium of action through the system, and 

 should never be subdued by the use of agents that deprive 

 the organs of the power to produce it. Fever will be 

 generally manifested in one or more of that combination of 

 signs commonly given as a description of fever, viz., increased 

 velocity of the pulse, heat, redness, pain and swelling, thirst, 

 obstructed surface, &c, some of which will be present, local 

 or general, in greater or less degree, in all forms of disease. 

 In what is called acute attacks, these signs are very mani- 

 fest : in chronic cases, they are often faint ; but still they 

 exist. When an animal has taken cold, and there is power 

 enough in the system to keep up a continual warfare against 

 obstructions, the disturbance of vital action being unbroken, 

 the fever is called pure, or unbroken. The powers of the 

 system may become exhausted by efforts at relief, and the 

 fever will be periodically reduced : this form of fever is 

 called remittent. It would be asburd to expect that the 

 most accurate definition of fever would correspond, in all its 

 details, with another case, as to expect all animals to be alike. 



There are many agents that obstruct vital action, and many 

 an organ to be obstructed, which some have classed as distinct 

 fevers ; for example, milk fever, puerperal fever, symptom- 

 atic, typhus, inflammatory, &c. Our system teaches us that 

 there is but one cause of fever, viz., the natural motive power 

 of the system, and but one fever itself, viz., accumulated vital 

 action ; hence the treatment must be physiological. 



Veterinary Surgeon Percival, in an article on fever, says, 

 " We have no more reason, not near so much, to give fever a 

 habitation in the abdomen, as we have to enthrone it in the 

 head ; but it would appear from the full range of observation, 



