In 1862 appeared Murchison’s work on “The Continued Fevers of Great Britain,” dealing especially with typhus, typhoid, and relapsing fevers. In this he treats exhaustively the history, geographical range, causation, symptoms, treatment, and many other questions connected with fevers, and endeavours especially to reduce his observations to a numerical expression. His strong conviction was that these diseases are preventable, and that they originate in certain unhealthy and impure conditions capable of generating specific poisons in each case. But as he commenced his work at the London Fever Hospital believing that typhus and typhoid fever were mere varieties of one disease, in spite of Stewart’s and Jenner’s publications, so he maintained to the last that Budd’s view as to the germ origin of typhoid fever was erroneous, and that even if typhoid were communicable by germs, it could arise anew when favouring conditions of decomposition occurred. He regarded it as proved that typhoid fever is constantly appearing where decomposing sewage is present, but where every effort fails to detect contamination from a previous typhoid patient. Murchison’s work was at once recognised as a standard one. The first edition was rapidly sold, and it was translated into German. The publication of a second edition was, however, delayed till 1873, owing to Murchison’s strong desire to make his book as complete statistically as possible. The first edition was based on 6703 cases of continued fever admitted into the London Fever Hospital in the years 1848-57, but the second included the results of a far larger number, 28,863, admitted during 1848-70, thus giving the entire medical history of the fever hospital from the time that the different continued fevers were first distinguished in 1848. Energy and resolution of the most intense description are indicated by such a labour. This work had to be done in the intervals of growing practice and hospital teaching. By the time he was forty years old Murchison was one of the leading London physicians, and continued in full work till his death.