1. In many instances, I have seen worms discharged in the small-pox and measles, from children who were in perfect health previously to their being attacked by those diseases, and who never before discovered a single symptom of worms. I shall say nothing here of the swarms of worms which are discharged in fevers of all kinds, until I attempt to prove that an idiopathic fever is never produced by worms. 2. Nine out of ten of the cases which I have seen of worms, have been in children of the grossest habits and most vigorous constitutions. This is more especially the case where the worms are dislodged by the small-pox and measles. Doctor Capelle of Wilmington, in a letter which I received from him, informed me, that in the livers of sixteen, out of eighteen rats which he dissected, he found a number of the tænia worms. The rats were fat, and appeared in other respects to have been in perfect health. The two rats in which he found no worms, he says, "were very lean, and their livers smaller in proportion than the others." 3. In weakly children, I have often known the most powerful anthelmintics given without bringing away a single worm. If these medicines have afforded any relief, it has been by their tonic quality. From this fact, is it not probable--the conjecture, I am afraid, is too bold, but I will risk it:--is it not probable, I say, that children are sometimes disordered from the want of worms? Perhaps the tonic medicines which have been mentioned, render the bowels a more quiet and comfortable asylum for them, and thereby provide the system with the means of obviating the effects of crapulas, to which all children are disposed. It is in this way that nature, in many instances, cures evil by evil. I confine the salutary office of worms only to that species of them which is known by the name of the round worm, and which occurs most frequently in children. Is there any such disease as an idiopathic WORM-FEVER? The Indians in this country say there is not, and ascribe the discharge of worms to a fever, and not a fever to the worms[40]. [40] See the Inquiry into the Diseases of the Indians, p. 19. By adopting this opinion, I am aware that I contradict the observations of many eminent and respectable physicians. Doctor Huxham describes an epidemic pleurisy, in the month of March, in the year 1740, which he supposes was produced by his patients feeding upon some corn that had been injured by the rain the August before[41]. He likewise mentions that a number of people, and those too of the elderly sort[42], were afflicted at one time with worms, in the month of April, in the year 1743. [41] Vol. II. of his Epidemics, p. 56. [42] P. 136.