This fever assumes various forms, according to the peculiar constitutions of different men, and other circumstances; but in the following description I shall enumerate the most common appearances:--In general it begins with short alternate chills and flushes of heat, seldom with those rigors which constitute the regular cold fit, and with which most other fevers begin. These are immediately succeeded by violent head-ach, pain in the back, universal debility, sickness, and anguish at the stomach. There is commonly, in the beginning, a good deal of bile on the stomach, which is thrown off by vomiting, either natural or excited by an emetic. Those men who were taken ill of this fever in the Alcide, in the end of the year 1781, had a sore throat in the beginning; but this is not a common symptom. In the course of this disease there is by no means a free secretion of bile, and least of all in those cases that are most violent, and prove the soonest fatal. In cases that are more protracted, and less desperate, there are frequent accumulations of it, as appears by the vomits and stools[103]. The eye in a few hours takes a yellow tinge, which soon after extends more or less over the face and whole skin. This is a symptom so striking and constant, that it gives name to the disease, though it is not absolutely either peculiar or essential to it. There is something contagious in this symptom, which seems somewhat singular, and difficult to be accounted for. It was observed in the Royal Oak and Alcide to extend to men who were but slightly indisposed; and at the hospital it spread to men in the adjoining beds, without imparting any malignity to their diseases. There is something very peculiar in the countenances of those who are seized with it, discernible from the beginning by those who are accustomed to see it. This appearance consists in a yellow or dingy flushing or fullness of the face and neck, particularly about the parotid glands, where the yellow colour of the skin is commonly first perceived. There is also in the eye and muscles of the countenance a remarkable expression of dejection and distress. One of the most constant and distinguishing symptoms of this fever is an obstinate, unremitting, and painful _pervigilium_, which is the more tormenting, as the patient is extremely desirous of sleep. It is seldom that even a _delirium_ comes to his relief to make him forget himself for a moment; but he continues broad awake, night and day, with his reason and senses sound, in a state of the most uneasy agitation.