However this may be, and to leave for the present all matter of inference, and to keep strictly to the matter of fact, we do positively know that the mild forms of fever become severe in consequence of the supervention of inflammation in certain organs. Perfectly unknown as the nature of the primitive febrile affection at present is, yet that in the progress of the disease it does ultimately pass into inflammation is a fact, the evidence of which it is impossible to resist; although the same observation which teaches us this most important truth, teaches us also that the inflammatory action is always considerably modified by the febrile state. How it is so modified, and to what extent, we shall consider hereafter. I have spent much consideration and some labour in the effort to combine the symptoms which attend these severer forms of the disease with the ascertained conditions of the organs upon which such symptoms depend. But since it is of paramount importance that the events which actually take place should be known, and that the order in which they succeed each other should be stated with clearness and exactness; and since I have been able by no method that I could think of to combine the pathology with the history without breaking too much the continuity of the latter, I have been under the necessity of separating these two most intimately connected subjects, and of treating of them under distinct sections. In giving the history of the events, I have detailed them strictly, as far as I am acquainted with them, in the order in which they occur: and I have endeavoured to arrange the cases that constitute the pathology in such a manner, that they shall closely correspond to these events, and clearly illustrate the order of their succession. If I have succeeded according to my wish, the reader in studying the cases will be reminded, as he proceeds, of the successive stages of the history, and if he again revert to the history, after having studied the pathology, he will be reminded of the morbid appearances in the organs which are there described. To afford a clear perception of the connexion between the successive events, as indicated by the symptoms during life, and the progressive changes of structure in various organs, as demonstrated by inspection after death; and thus to establish a strong and indissoluble association in the mind between the morbid condition and its sign, are the objects at which I have aimed. If I have succeeded, I shall have accomplished one of the chief objects of my undertaking.