This is a sufficient and an interesting proof that this illustrious physician saw the importance of making the analysis in question; it shews also, that his ingenuity suggested probably the best mode of conducting it which a philosopher sitting in his study could devise; and the only proper mode of conducting it the circumstances of his age and country did not place within his reach. Accordingly his success did not equal his labour: for out of the three phenomena which he fixes upon as those that are common to all the varieties of the disease there is not one which is invariably found in any type of it; while in innumerable cases the combination of the three is not found. Shivering does not occur in some of the worst forms of the malady; and where it does, it is confined to the commencement of the attack, or to that of its exacerbations. The pulse, instead of being always more frequent than natural, in some of the most formidable aspects assumed by the disease, has been observed to be as low as forty or even thirty in the minute, and, from the beginning to the termination of the attack, the heat in some cases is below the natural standard, as it generally is in the commencement of the cold stage. To the catalogue of Boerhaave, Cullen makes the following additions:—“languor, lassitude and other signs of debility, together with derangement of the functions, particularly a want of vigor in the limbs without any primary local affection.” This extension of the catalogue adds in no respect to the excellence of the generalization. It has all the vices which a definition can possess. The characters are not present in all cases; the very opposite are strikingly prominent in many, while the last, “without any primary local affection,” has so direct a tendency to mislead the mind, and positively to prevent it from observing the real phenomena of the disease, that it may well be questioned, whether the introduction of this single phrase into the definition of fever, has not been the occasion of far more practical mischief than has been compensated by any good that has been accomplished, or ever can be accomplished by all the rest of the nosology. In the last attempt to improve the definition of fever with which I am acquainted, Dr. Wilson Philip says, “If we lay aside Dr. Cullen’s term pyrexia, (which it must be borne in mind is precisely Boerhaave’s brief catalogue) we shall considerably lessen the difficulty of giving such a definition of idiopathic fevers as shall apply to all cases. They may be defined as follows. Languor, lassitude, and other signs of debility, followed by a frequent pulse, and increased heat, without any primary local affection.”[18] Inasmuch as this definition contains fewer words than that proposed by Cullen, it may be liable to fewer objections, but it is less faulty only because it is shorter.