It would be easy to multiply cases to an indefinite extent, but, since
those which have been cited exhibit a complete view of the pathology of
fever, as far as it has yet been ascertained, any further details would
fatigue the reader without instructing him. And what is this pathology?
What are the events, the detail of which has occupied us so long? The
account of the pathology of fever is the history of inflammation, and
the description of the individual changes that take place in the organs
that constitute the febrile circle, is an enumeration of various
products of inflammation which are formed within them. There is scarcely
a fatal case of fever which does not afford, in one or other of the
organs of that circle, some inflammatory product; there is no
considerable number of fatal cases which does not furnish a specimen of
every inflammatory product. And what are the severest cases of fever,
and why are they the severest? With the single exception immediately to
be stated, the severest cases are those in which, together with a severe
primary affection of the nervous system, this inflammatory action is in
the greatest degree of intensity, and is seated in the greatest number
of organs; and they are the most severe, not only on account of the
severity of the primary affection of the nervous system, but also
because it is in them that the inflammation is the most intense, and
because that inflammation attacks the system at one and the same time in
the greatest number of points. From among the preceding cases, fix upon
any one in which the powers of life were, from the commencement, the
most completely overwhelmed, and in which they were the most rapidly
exhausted, and when the brief struggle for existence is over, examine
the changes that have taken place in the internal organs—what is it that
is found? traces of inflammation, legible, deep, extensive; while, in
almost every case, these traces are thus legible, deep, and extensive,
in proportion to the apparent intensity of the fever, and to the
rapidity with which it extinguished life. In this point of view, how
important, how instructive, how invaluable is the lesson which the mixed
cases of fever afford! With few and rare exceptions (and in all diseases
some exceptions occasionally occur to what appear to be the best
established and the most invariable laws) these are the cases in which
the symptoms are the most urgent, and in which they run their course
with the greatest rapidity; these are the cases in which the debility is
the most striking; in which it comes on the most early, and proceeds to
the greatest degree of prostration; these are the cases which are the
most purely typhoid, the most truly adynamic; these are the cases which,
in general, commence with the most sudden and alarming deprivation of
physical and mental power; in which all pain and uneasiness are soonest
lost in stupor, in which the stupor most rapidly increases to
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