Lieutade gives an account of an epidemic worm-fever from Velchius, an Italian physician[43]; and Sauvages describes, from Vandermonde, an epidemic dysentery from worms, which yielded finally only to worm medicines[44]. Sir John Pringle, and Doctor Monro, likewise frequently mention worms as accompanying the dysentery and remitting fever, and recommend the use of calomel as an antidote to them. [43] Vol. I. p. 76. [44] Vol. II. p. 329. I grant that worms appear more frequently in some epidemic diseases than in others, and oftener in some years than in others. But may not the same heat, moisture, and diet which produced the diseases, have produced the worms? And may not their discharge from the bowels have been occasioned in those epidemics, as in the small-pox and measles, by the increased heat of the body, by the want of nourishment, or by an anthelmintic quality being accidentally combined with some of the medicines that are usually given in fevers? In answer to this, we are told that we often see the crisis of a fever brought on by the discharge of worms from the bowels by means of a purge, or by an anthelmintic medicine. Whenever this is the case, I believe it is occasioned by offending bile being dislodged by means of the purge, at the same time with the worms, or by the anthelmintic medicine (if not a purge) having been given on, or near one of the usual critical days of the fever. What makes the latter supposition probable is, that worms are seldom suspected in the beginning of fevers, and anthelmintic medicines seldom given, till every other remedy has failed of success; and this generally happens about the usual time in which fevers terminate in life or death. It is very remarkable, that since the discovery and description of the hydrocephalus internus, we hear and read much less than formerly of worm-fevers. I suspect that disease of the brain has laid the foundation for the principal part of the cases of worm-fevers which are upon record in books of medicine. I grant that worms sometimes increase the danger from fevers, and often confound the diagnosis and prognosis of them, by a number of new and anomalous symptoms. But here we see nothing more than that complication of symptoms which often occurs in diseases of a very different and opposite nature. Having rejected worms as the cause of fevers, I proceed to remark, that the diseases most commonly produced by them, belong to Dr. Cullen's class of NEUROSES. And here I might add, that there is scarcely a disease, or a symptom of a disease, belonging to this class, which is not produced by worms. It would be only publishing extracts from books, to describe them. The _chronic_ and _nervous_ diseases of children, which are so numerous and frequently fatal, are, I believe, frequently occasioned by worms. There is no great danger, therefore, of doing mischief, by prescribing anthelmintic medicines in all our first attempts to cure their chronic and nervous diseases.