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Show 33% Evidence from considerable time after death. But as I‘ am unable to make the reply out satisfactory, I resign the task to abler hands, and proceed very briefly, to consider how far such feelings about the head and such disturbances of the sensorial functions as are usual in idiopathic fever go towards proving the presence of inflammation of the brain or its membranes. Without rendering the language of pathology still more confused, we cannot employ pain and inflammation as convertible terms-Gastrodynia and the sensations occurring in torpid states observable in the different neuroses on'the one hand, and innumerable dissections on the other, by which unsuspected disorgan- izations have been brought to light, shew clearly enough that they are reciprocally independent of each other. No one probably thinks otherwise, or if he does, it is impossible to engage with him in medical discussion, till he has translated almost all the facts of medicine into a new language. If there be a distinction to be made, the typhoid acute inflammation often partakes with scrophulous and some other chr0nic inflammations this remarkable character, that i! proceeds without pain or 10in may [iii/8 in proportion t0 the deer/stations which it one This Dr. Fothergill notices in a case sinus. of angina maligna (Essay p. 47.) Dr. Huxham s p. 281) and Dr. Jobnstone (Epid. {If {liter J Kidderminsz‘er} the sensorz'ul functions. 139 Kidderminster) confirm the remark. Dr. Smith obsert'. p. 21.) distinguishes putrid from inflam» matory sore-throat by absence of pain. Dr. Wall, formerly of Worcester, frequently found the parts greatly disorganized in the pntrid sore-throat, while the [patient swallowed nearly as well as in perfect health (tracts p. 80). When Martean tells us of the pulsative or throbbing pain in his epidemic, adding other circumstances, particularly his great success from bleeding, I am disposed to think it pr0~ bable that the fever set out with inflammation in the head. Those who generalize the idea will perhaps observe to me that it is not in pain alone but in a certain combination, that the evidence of their doctrine consists. But this constituent pain, like the complex term inflammation itself, vanishes on close inspection. Is it not from a few cases where pus was found in the head, that the whole speculation arose? though on a large comparison the process, by which that pus was generated, appears more probably incidental. Is it not the same faulty generalization that gives us the average pain of typhus as identical with the pain of inflammation? Were the other proofs more satisfactory, I should not urge exceptions, remembering how little of sharp pain sometimes attends the severest pneumonia. I have been this year able to trace an epidemic typhus, if epidemic |