CORRESPONDENCE. 
189 
idiopathic, and that the lesion caused the fever and not the fever 
the lesion. So cerebro-spinal meningitis implies a local disease, and 
that the resulting fever is caused by it; whereas, cerebro-spinal 
fever implies that fever is the disease itself, and the lesions that 
follow are caused by it. 
It is a fever we are naming and not an inflammation. And so 
I might go on with instances, but these will be sufficient to indi¬ 
cate the rule I would adopt by which to name fevers. 
Some will ask how extensive should the lesion be in a fever to 
attach importance enough to it to name it after the organ or tis¬ 
sue affected. To this I answer, so far as I am aware, it is not held 
by medical authors that it should be extensive enough to consti¬ 
tute an inflammatory condition, but that the lesion may consist of 
merely a morbid change in the functions of organs or tissues, pro¬ 
viding it is conspicuous over all others affected. 
In a great majority of cases of pink-eye true cellulitis does not 
exist, but derangement of cellular tissues does exist in nearly all 
cases; enough so to mark it the most conspicuous seat of lesion. 
Those mild cases that present no distinctive seat of lesion ought, 
perhaps, to be called simple continued fever, while the former may 
appropriately be called cellulitic fever. 
Of course the thought will be suggested to many that a marked 
derangement of cellular tissue frequently exists in catarrhal fever, 
as indicated by edematous limbs, etc. This is admitted, and I ad¬ 
mit further that catarrhal fever and cellulitic fever resemble each 
other in more respects than in edema of the limbs. Each has 
other symptoms common to continued fevers. But difference is 
marked in the following: First, in cellulitic fever there is, as a 
rule, the absence of catarrhal disorder. In cellulitic fever pleurisy 
or pleurodynia and articular complications are quite apt to occur. 
Catarrhal fever is seldom attended with either of them. If pneu¬ 
monia occurs during cellulitic fever, it is exudative and not catar- 
ilial pneumonia. In cellulitic fever iritis often occurs. In catar¬ 
rhal fever I have never observed it. 
In cellulitic fever there is frequently oedema of the eyelids, 
but seldom any evidence of conjunctival disorder, though in 
catarrhal fever there is sometimes catarrhal ophthalmia. Cellulitic 
fever is attended or followed by articular derangement or 
