96 ORGANISED FLUIDS. 



manifested themselves, and which may ultimately complicate 

 all fevers, the loss of fibrin is considerable, and further that the 

 intensity of the symptoms is in direct relation to this loss, 

 being great when the diminution of fibrin is also great. 



It is not to be understood, however, that the deficiency of 

 fibrin constitutes the essence or real and specific cause of fever ; 

 for this we must look to some other agent or fact, probably 

 to the contamination of the general mass of the blood by the 

 imbibition of some deleterious and subtle miasma. That the 

 deficiency in the amount of fibrin is not the cause of fevers 

 we find to be proved by the facts that this class of maladies 

 attacks persons of every possible variety of habit and con- 

 stitution, and in many of whom, at the onset of the disorder, 

 no deficiency of fibrin can be detected ; and the same view 

 is likewise confirmed by the circumstance which must have 

 attracted the attention of every physician, viz. that the 

 primary condition and inherent powers of the system deter- 

 mine and control but to a comparatively slight extent the 

 course which the malady may take, and which course seems 

 to be dependent upon the nature and quality of the infecting 

 agent itself. The inference, then, which may be derived 

 from the fact that a deficiency of fibrin exists in the blood of 

 persons afflicted with fever, is, that the tendency of the 

 cause of fever, a miasma, or whatever else it may be, is to 

 occasion a depreciation of the physiological standard of the 

 fibrin in the blood, and not that the deficiency is in itself the 

 exciting cause of fever. 



Between this diminution in the normal proportion of the 

 fibrin and the various hemorrhages, which are so often 

 observed to complicate fevers of all kinds, a co-relation 

 doubtless exists, although the precise manner in which this 

 deficiency leads to such a frequent recurrence of hemorrhage 

 is not clearly understood, and the only way in which this can 

 be explained is by the supposition that in fevers from the 

 cause assigned, viz. the small quantity of fibrin, the solids 

 generally, and the blood-vessels in particular, lose a portion 

 of their solidity, and readily give way to the force of the fluid 

 contained within them. 



