It has sometimes occurred to myself, and I have frequently had reports from our surgeons, that agues continued obstinate till the gums could be affected by mercury. From a very intelligent officer I had a detail, regarding the Batavia fever, so remarkable, that I shall here insert it. This gentleman is the captain of a ship in India, who, in different voyages which he had made to Batavia, had constantly lost great numbers of his ship’s crews. In his last voyage, when in a certain latitude, and as he approached Batavia, he gave daily to each of his men a few grains of the mass of the blue pill. By the time of his arrival at Batavia, he had thus very gently affected every one of their mouths; and, in that voyage, he lost not a man. Would mercury thus exhibited, as a preventive, be useful in the plague, or in the yellow fever? Before dismissing the subject of fever I may observe that no well-marked case of typhus occurred to us in Egypt. In India we never saw a case of this species of fever. To the existence of this fever, which in Europe has committed such havoc in our fleets and armies, the climate of India is inimical. We know instances where, in transports, typhus had broke out, and, on the passage to the Cape of Good Hope or India, had proved little less destructive than the plague could have done; but the disease never reached India. If a case was landed there, it never propagated the contagion: a second case never appeared on shore. On inquiry, I found that no case had ever been known on the western side of the peninsula, nor have I ever heard of its existence in the eastern. HEPATITIS, OR THE LIVER COMPLAINT. In India I have often had occasion to remark, that the acute hepatitis, of Cullen, was a disease of rare occurrence. The disease which comes before us most frequently, in India, is his chronic species; and in that, most frequently, there is neither pyrexia nor the “decubitus in latus sinistrum difficilis,” which, from having included in the definition of both of his species, I suppose the illustrious and accurate professor was induced to believe was a constant symptom in this disease. In very few of his definitions is there room for alteration; and I hope, for venturing here to suggest one, that I shall not incur the charge of presumption. But hepatitis was a disease, for accounts of which the accurate nosologist must have trusted to other sources than his own observation. It should be known, that very often we meet with this disease, when few of the symptoms of his definition are found. In India I have learned from some of the oldest practitioners, and from some gentlemen of abilities, the most respectable in the profession, that very commonly hepatitis is met with when all the symptoms of Cullen’s definition are wanting. In that country, when any of the abdominal viscera are complained of, we may in general suspect some error in the hepatic system.