Essay on the Remit Unit and Intermittent Diseases. 339 



under mistaken views of the subject, have often proved unfortunate 

 and even fatal. 



Some account of the localities and causes of Marsh poison or 

 Malaria appeared in this Journal in the No. for Jan. 1830, where 

 many of his opinions respecting its effects were noticed. 



In the present work he states that there is no ground of doubt that 

 all fevers of any moment are produced either by contagion or mala- 

 ria, and that these two leading classes constitute the great mass ol 

 fevers throughout the world ; those which arise from other causes 

 being few in number, and of very litde concern from their trifling 

 power over the body. Remitting and intermitting fever he considers 

 identical, primarily produced by the application of Malaria to the 

 JVervous System. He anticipates that the popular idea attached to 

 the term nervous, may almost bring contempt upon the subject, as the 

 multitude, and even some physicians, deem the nerves metaphysi- 

 cal entities or nonentities, and the word nervous as applied to dis- 

 ease, is understood as meaning something unappreciable by human 

 investigation — the misfortune of a feeble body or a feeble mind, a 

 term applied to weak women, or more cowardly men, a property of 

 the valetudinary and hypochondriacal, a permission of the will — 

 an imagination : — but anatomy cannot forget that the nervous system, 

 forms a bulky, weighty portion of the body, equalling in extent and in 

 intricacy in distribution, the more obvious circulating system, though 

 not yielding blood to the sabre cut, or the lancet. Nor can physiol- 

 ogy or physic forget, that it is not the circulating, but the nervous 

 system, which is the prime mover, the cause even of all circula- 

 tion, of all motion, of life itself, governing and regulating the action 

 of every subordinate part — it is the ulterior structure to which the 

 deity has attached the principle of life, through which the soul of man 

 is enabled to act upon matter and to be affected by it." The position 

 of the brain, and the distribution of the nerves are understood, but 

 of the mode in which they perform their " almost miraculous offices," 

 or of the manner in which their substance is affected by disease, no- 

 thing is known ; disection discovers no secret analogies in aid of en- 

 quiry ; yet that they are often deranged and subjected to peculiar 

 and painful diseases, is fully demonstrated in the course of the work. 

 These affections are extensively revealed in Remitting and Intermit- 

 ting fever, and Neuralgia*. 



* Neuralgia is a diseased condition of a portion of a nerve ascertained to be 

 brought on by Malaria, by cold, and by local injul'ies; regulated by periods of 

 twelve hours or its multiples, with intervals free from obvious disease. 



