Moreover, we have no example of instantaneous death by the sudden excitement of inflammation in any organ, or in any number of organs: inflammation is a process: a certain number of events take place in a certain order; and there is always, as far as has been hitherto observed, some interval between these events. A case is recorded in which inflammation of the bowels (acute enteritis) proved fatal, as was supposed, in eight hours from the commencement of the attack; but so rapid was the process, that the intelligent surgeons who witnessed it doubted whether the time when the disease began could have been noted accurately: at all events, it does not accord with the best-established facts relative to the process of inflammation, that it should prove fatal without the lapse of some hours. Fever, on the contrary, does not need as much as a single hour to complete the work of death. It is well known that the poison which, in a certain state of concentration, produces fever with the ordinary period of duration, in a higher state of concentration produces instantaneous death; and that, in certain climates and seasons, it is not uncommon for persons previously in sound and vigorous health, on exposure to that poison, to sicken and to die in a shorter space of time than is requisite, under ordinary circumstances, for the mere formation of the inflammatory process. The state of the system, in the primary attack of fever, and the state of the system in inflammation, do not, therefore, appear to be identical. The truth is, that we do not know what the real state of the system is in either case, but we see that the phenomena of the one differ from those of the other; to conclude, therefore, that the states are the same is not a sound induction. While, then, we are constrained to admit that we know nothing of the nature of the primary affection of the nervous system in fever, the closest consideration of all the phenomena alike constrains us to conclude, that that affection is peculiar and specific. This peculiar and specific affection appears to be much more analogous to the condition into which the nervous system is brought by the application of certain poisons, than to that which is proper to pure inflammation. The more closely and extensively the subject is investigated, the more clear and satisfactory the evidence becomes, that the great primary cause of fever is a poison, the operation of which, like that of some other poisons, the nature of which is better understood, and the action of which has been more completely examined, is ascertained to be upon the nervous system. How these poisons act upon the nervous system we do not know, nor can we possibly know, as long as we remain so profoundly ignorant of the nature of the action of the nervous system in the state of health.