FEVERS. 493 



form of slops and cooling drinks where it would be totally refused if 

 offered in its ordinary form, as hard oats or dry hay, requiring the 

 labor of grinding between the teeth and swallowing by the weakened 

 muscles of the jaws and throat. 



Tonics and stimulants are remedies which are used to meet special 

 indications, as in the case of a feeble heart, and which enter into the 

 after treatment of inflammatory troubles as well as into the acute 

 stages of them. They brace up weakened and torpid glands; they 

 stimulate the secretion of the necessary fluids of the body, and hasten 

 the excretion of the waste material produced by the inflammatory 

 process ; they regulate the action of a weakened heart ; they promote 

 healthy vitality of diseased parts, and aid the chemical changes 

 needed for returning the altered tissues to their normal condition. 



FEVERS. 



[SYNONYMS: Febris, Latin; pyrexia, Greek; fidvre, French; fleber, German; 

 febbre, Italian; calentwa, .Spanish.] 



The etymology of the word " fever," from the Latin fevere, to boil 

 or to burn, and of pyrexia, from the Greek word Trip, fire, defines in a 

 general way the meaning of the term. 



Fever is a general condition of the animal body in which there is an 

 elevation of the animal body temperature, which may be only a de- 

 gree or two or may be 10 F. The elevation of the body temperature, 

 which represents tissue change or combustion, is accompanied by an 

 acceleration of the heart's action, a quickening of the respiration, and 

 an aberration in the functional activity of the various organs of the 

 body. These organs may be stimulated to the performance of exces- 

 sive work, or they may be incapacitated from carrying out their 

 allotted tasks, or, in the course of a fever, the two conditions may 

 both exist, the one succeeding the other. Fever as a disease is usually 

 preceded by chills as an essential symptom. 



Fevers are divided into essential fevers and symptomatic fevers. 

 In symptomatic fever some local disease, usually of an inflammatory 

 character, develops first, and the constitutional febrile phenomena are 

 the result of the primary point of combustion irritating the whole 

 body, either through the nervous system or directly by means of the 

 waste material which is carried into the circulation and through the 

 blood vessels, and is distributed to distal parts. Essential fevers are 

 those in which there is from the outset a general disturbance of the 

 whole economy. This may consist of an elementary alteration in the 

 blood or a general change in the constitution of the tissues. Fevers 

 of the latter class are usually due to some infecting agent and belong, 

 therefore, to the class of infectious diseases. 



Essential fevers are subdivided into ephemeral fevers, which last 

 but a short time and terminate by critical phenomena; intermittent 



