144 NATURE AND LIFE. 



a period of thirty-six hours, or about two days, during 

 which the heat rises slowly to 41. Toward the third day, 

 this heat decreases, ready to reappear in exacerbations of 

 from half a degree to a degree, during three or seven days, 

 at the end of which time the disorder has run its course. 

 When the temperature gradually rises after the third day, 

 a fatal result may be expected. Persistent heat in that 

 case is the precursor of death. Eruptive fevers, like small- 

 pox, scarlatina, and measles, present very important phe- 

 nomena of heat. In these heat begins with the attack of 

 the malady, and increases till the cutaneous eruption oc- 

 curs. It keeps up at a maximum, which reaches 42^- (in 

 scarlatina), till the eruption is complete ; then it begins a 

 declining course, variable with the phases of the eruption, 

 which finishes either with scaling off as in scarlatina, or 

 suppuration as in small-pox. And the temperature rises 

 also in several surgical affections, bringing on a more or 

 less inflamed and feverish condition. This is observed in 

 wounds, and generally in every kind of traumatism, in te- 

 tanus, aneurisms, etc. In the case of strangulated hernia 

 and of burns, and in most cases of poisoning, on the other 

 hand, it declines in a remarkable way. 



Very plainly this rising and falling of animal warmth in 

 diseases can only be attributed to a corresponding state 

 occurring in the energy of respiratory combustion. We do 

 not yet exactly know the cause of these variations, that is, 

 the mechanism by which the morbid influences stimulate or 

 check the active production of heat. Some physicians see 

 in it the effect of fermentations occasioned in the blood by 

 certain microscopic beings, such as bacteria and vibrioues, 

 which may perhaps be supposed to be the fact in most 

 febrile maladies. Others assume that, in local inflamma- 

 tions, it is the inflamed organ which communicates heat to 

 the whole body, as a furnace does in a confined space. To 

 others the disturbance seems rather to have a nervous 



