It is not the object of the present volume to treat of intermittent or of remittent fever, but only of that class which, in ordinary medical language, is termed continued. Of the apparently endless varieties of disease comprehended under the term continued fever, it is found that certain forms occur in this country with great constancy. Each particular assemblage of symptoms occurring in these different forms is said, in ordinary language, to constitute a type or species. Each type or species depends on a particular condition of the circle of organs that has been described. The causes that concur to produce this particular condition of this series of organs, will be treated of in their proper place. But these assemblages of symptoms never occur without being accompanied by these particular conditions of the organs; and these conditions of the organs are never found without having been connected with these assemblages of symptoms. In all the forms of fever hitherto observed this condition of the organs is found to be absolutely the same: it never differs in any thing but intensity; of this the evidence is complete and irresistible: the direct and legitimate inference is, that all these different forms of fever differ in nothing excepting in the intensity of the affection. Were the terms genera, species, variety, merely used as short expressions to denote this fact; to point out and to name different degrees of the same malady, degrees which it is important to discriminate, because they require material modifications of treatment, a clear and precise meaning would be affixed to these words: in nature there would be foundation for the distinction they imply: in practice there might be convenience in their use. But the nosological distinctions at present inseparably associated with these terms, appear to me to be either so vague and unmeaning, or when they cease to be indistinct, to excite notions so false and pernicious, that I think it right to abandon the use of them altogether. The more we investigate the subject, the more satisfied we shall become that continued fever is one disease and only one, however varied, or even opposite, the aspect it may present; but that it differs in intensity in every different case, and that this and this alone is the cause of the different forms it assumes. Many of these diversities it would be frivolous to distinguish: some of them, on the other hand, it is of the highest importance to discriminate. For all useful and practical purposes, it is necessary only to arrange the different assemblages of symptoms into two great classes, the one comprehending the mild and the other the severe forms of the disease. All the forms that continued fever can assume, and all the individual cases that can occur under either, must be mild or severe, and, therefore, must readily find its place under one or other of these divisions. The only real difference in the disease being a difference in degree, it is proper that the