THEORY OF CULLEN. 1035 



given no satisfactory explanation of its diminution 

 or increase during disease. In accordance with 

 the views of Hoffman and Cullen,* he maintains 

 that the chill and all the following symptoms 

 are clearly referable to some derangement of the 

 brain and spinal cord, that the cold stage is 

 produced by a disturbance of the respiratory and 

 circulatory organs, which no longer receive their 

 accustomed supply of influence from the nervous 

 system ; while the hot stage is owing to some 

 morbid action of the pulmonary and systemic 

 capillaries, (pp. 81-84. 345.) 



* The celebrated theory of Cullen, as summed up by the author 

 in his Practice of Physic, was, that " the remote causes of fever 

 are certain sedative powers applied to the nervous system, which 

 diminishing the energy of the brain, thereby produce debility in 

 the whole of the functions, and particularly in the action of the 

 extreme vessels : but such, however, is, at the same time, the 

 nature of the animal economy, that this debility proves an indirect 

 stimulus to the sanguiferous system ; whence, by the intervening 

 cold stage, and spasm connected with it, the action of the heart 

 and large arteries is increased, and continues so till it has had the 

 effect of restoring the energy of the brain, of extending this 

 energy to the extreme vessels, of restoring therefore their action, 

 and thereby especially overcoming the spasm affecting them ; 

 upon the removing of which the excretion of sweat and other 

 marks of relaxation of the excretories take place." But he never 

 explained how the remote causes induce debility, spasm, and the 

 cold stage ; nor in what way the latter induces the hot stage. 

 And what is still more difficult to comprehend, he represents 

 both as efforts of the vis medicatrix naturce to obviate the effects 

 of morbific agents. (See Sections xlvi. lii.) But although Cullen 

 speaks of his theory as " a generalization of facts, from a cautious 

 and full induction," it is now very generally regarded as a mere 

 tissue of gratuitous assumptions which explain nothing. 



