hey stimulate
the secretion of the necessary fluids of the body, and hasten the
excretion of the waste material produced by the inflammatory process;
they regulate the action of a weakened heart; they promote healthy
vitality of diseased parts, and aid the chemical changes needed for
returning the altered tissues to their normal condition.

FEVERS.

Fever is a general condition of the animal body in which there is an
elevation of the animal body temperature, which may be only a degree or
two or may be 10 deg. F. The elevation of the body temperature, which
represents tissue change or combustion, is accompanied with an
acceleration of the heart's action, a quickening of the respiration, and
an aberration in the functional activity of the various organs of the
body. These organs may be stimulated to the performance of excessive
work, or they may be incapacitated from carrying out their allotted
tasks, or, in the course of a fever, the two conditions may both exist,
the one succeeding the other. Fever as a disease is usually preceded by
chills as an essential symptom.

Fevers are divided into essential fevers and symptomatic fevers. In
symptomatic fever some local disease, usually of an inflammatory
character, develops first, and the constitutional febrile phenomena are
the result of the primary point of combustion irritating the whole body,
either through the nervous system or directly by means of the waste
material which is carried into the circulation and through the blood
vessels, and is distributed to distal parts. Essential fevers are those
in which there is from the outset a general disturbance of the whole
economy. This may consist of an elementary alteration in the blood or a
general change in the constitution of the tissues. Fevers of the latter
class are usually due to some infecting agent and belong, therefore, to
the class of infectious diseases.

Essential fevers are subdivided into ephemeral fevers, which last but a
short time and terminate by critical phenomena; intermittent fevers, in
which there are alterations of exacerbations of the febrile symptoms and
remissions, in which the body returns to its normal condition or
sometimes to a depressed condition, in which the functions of life are
but badly performed; and continued fevers, which include contagious
diseases, such as glanders, influenza, etc., the septic diseases, such
as pyemia, septicemia, etc., and the eruptive fevers, such as variola,
etc