364 Miscellanies. 



Dr. Smith considers a specific poison applied to the brain and 

 nerves as the exciting cause of fever, and that this poison emanates 

 from vegetable and animal substances, which at certain stages of de- 

 composition, send forth miasmatic efiluvia, destructive to life. In 

 the present state of knowledge, the form of this poison is wholly un- 

 known, but that it is a material entity, of most deadly agency, is 

 proved by undeniable evidence. This is an important step gained, 

 since it may teach us the means of preventing its developement in 

 many instances, and of shunning the danger of it in those regions 

 where the industry of man cannot overcome or prevent it. Dr. S. 

 considers all the forms of fever as identical, and says, " the condition 

 of the organs is found to be absolutely the same in every variety, 

 never differing in any thing but intensity." Although the inferences 

 he derives from the pathology of fever lead to a mode of treatment 

 the reverse of that practised by some other physicians of eminence, 

 he is particularly careful to stale, that he urges this practice upon 

 those only who are under similar influences of climate and habits, 

 and under certain modifications of the disorder. He must be an 

 acute naturalist and philosopher, who can detect the agencies which 

 disturb the secret influences of the brain, and cut off the supplies of 

 activity and vigor dispensed by the nerves to the organs of respiration 

 and life. The mysteries which still involve the subject invite the aid 

 of science to further investigation. Although so much has been done 

 in discovering which are the organs primarily affected by the poison 

 of malaria ; and although the progress of its operation has been traced 

 with surprising clearness by Dr. Smith, from the brain and nerves to 

 the circulating system, and thence to the respiratory organs and the 

 digestive apparatus; disclosing many important facts that indicate the 

 probable efficacy of remedies ; yet he acknowledges that "many are 

 the dark spots which remain in this part of the field of knowledge, 

 and that many laborers must work long and skillfully before they will 

 be removed." What is the morbid state of the brain and nerves, 

 which causes such frightful consequences to the whole frame, remains 

 unknown. Whether it is owing to debility of those organs, by which 

 they fail to impart the spring of life to the respiratory and circulating 

 systems — or whether to a species of inflammation peculiar to the 

 nervous structure — or whether it is an effect like that produced by 

 narcotic poisons — or whether some affection pervades their substance 

 of which no analogy is furnished by physiology — remains a subject 

 of the deepest interest to the medical and philosophical inquirer. 



