of the whole arterial system, the thinner part
being taken away by the increased absorption of the inflamed lymphatics.

The sensitive fevers with weak pulse, which are termed putrid or malignant
fevers, are distinguished from irritative fevers with weak pulse, called
nervous fevers, described in the last section, as the former consist of
inflammation joined with debility, and the latter of debility alone. Hence
there is greater heat and more florid colour of the skin in the former,
with petechiae, or purple spots, and aphthae, or sloughs in the throat, and
generally with previous contagion.

When animal matter dies, as a slough in the throat, or the mortified part
of a carbuncle, if it be kept moist and warm, as during its abhesion to a
living body, it will soon putrify. This, and the origin of contagion from
putrid animal substances, seem to have given rise to the septic and
antiseptic theory of these fevers.

The matter in pustules and ulcers is thus liable to become putrid, and to
produce microscopic animalcula; the urine, if too long retained, may also
gain a putrescent smell, as well as the alvine feces; but some writers have
gone so far as to believe, that the blood itself in these fevers has smelt
putrid, when drawn from the arm of the patient: but this seems not well
founded; since a single particle of putrid matter taken into the blood can
produce fever, how can we conceive that the whole mass could continue a
minute in a putrid state without destroying life? Add to this, that putrid
animal substances give up air, as in gangrenes; and that hence if the blood
was putrid, air should be given out, which in the blood-vessels is known to
occasion immediate death.

In these sensitive fevers with strong pulse (or inflammations) there are
two sensorial faculties concerned in producing the disease, viz. irritation
and sensation; and hence, as their combined action is more violent, the
general quantity of sensorial power becomes further exhausted during the
exacerbation, and the system more rapidly weakened than in irritative fever
with strong pulse; where the spirit of animation is weakened by but one
mode of its exertion: so that this febris sensitiva pulsu forti (or
inflammatory fever,) may be considered as the febris irritativa pulsu
forti, with the addition of inflammation; and the febris sensitiva pulsu
debili (or malignant fever) may be considered as the febris irritativa
pulsu debili (or nervous fever), with