I am encouraged in the attempt to make this record, as far as it has yet gone, useful to the public by observing the feeling that prevails among those physicians who have studied fever with the greatest diligence, and who have contributed most to our knowledge of it, that it is a disease which is still little understood and the treatment of which remains extremely vague and uncertain. Perhaps there is no disease so little understood as the ordinary fever of this country and none by the mismanagement of which so much life is lost. Dr. Clutterbuck appears to me therefore to describe the situation of the physician to such an establishment as the Fever Hospital, not more candidly than truly when he says—“It becomes a duty incumbent on those particularly who have been placed in situations favourable for observing the disease, to give the result of their experience to the public, should it tend, in any degree, either to prevention or cure. The enquiry is by no means exhausted, considered either in a theoretical or practical point of view. There is still a want of uniformity of opinion among physicians regarding the nature of the present epidemic, as well as of fever in general: while, I am sorry to add, in practice we are not much better agreed;” and when he further adds;—“To ascertain these modifications” (that is the modifications which require a modification of treatment) “is the great desideratum, which nothing but the most cautious observation, aided by much time, and the joint efforts of numerous individuals, can fully supply.”[1]