As must necessarily be the case, these different and opposite theories are found to have the most important influence on the practice recommended by their respective authors in the treatment of the disease. The advocates of the first deprecate all active interference: the grand evil to be contended with is debility: the physician can easily weaken, but he cannot easily strengthen: he can depress to any extent he desires, but he cannot communicate power as he wishes. In a malady therefore of which the very essence consists in loss of energy the main duty of the physician is to husband the strength of the patient with the most anxious care, this being the chief means, as Cullen expressively termed it, of obviating the tendency to death. The important inference is, that every kind and every degree of depletion that can add to the primary cause of the malady, must be abstained from with the utmost caution. By the clearest and shortest deduction this will necessarily be the result to which every mind must come that really believes that debility is the essence of fever, while he who admits its inflammatory nature must think it criminal to stand idle by and allow the most extensive derangements in the structure of vital organs to proceed, without even an attempt to check them, as long as it is in his power to use the lancet or to procure leeches. The very order in which the believers in debility enumerate the remedies they recommend affords a striking illustration of the extent to which their theory influences their practice;[16] while the advocates of inflammation state explicitly that the remedy of the disease is one, and in point of importance one only, namely, the remedy which all admit to be the only efficient agent in the treatment of inflammation. “Fever to be treated successfully,” says Dr. Clutterbuck, “must be treated upon the general principles of inflammation; but at the same time with the modifications arising out of the peculiar nature of the organ affected, and in some degree also the nature of the exciting cause. Blood-letting, which but a few years ago was looked upon with abhorrence in the cure of contagious fever, and the utility of which is still far from being generally appreciated, is proved by ample testimony to be not only the most powerful, but the safest of remedies.” And in every variety of fever, and in all its stages, leeches are to be applied to the stomach, according to Broussais, and scarcely any thing else is to be done except enjoining rigid starvation. Emetics, purgatives, bark, wine, are all denounced; nothing but leeches and “diete absolue:” a costive state of the bowels persisting during five or even ten days is a good symptom and not to be interfered with.