ic paroxysms are occasioned by whatever
suddenly debilitates the system, as fear, or cold, and perhaps sometimes by
external moisture of the air, as all delicate people have their days of
greater or less debility, see Class IV. 3. 1. 8.

4. _Nausea pluvialis._ Sickness at the commencement of a rainy season is
very common among dogs, who assist themselves by eating the agrostris
canina, or dog's grass, and thus empty their stomachs. The same occurs with
less frequency to cats, who make use of the same expedient. See Sect. XVI.
11. I have known one person, who from his early years has always been sick
at the beginning of wet weather, and still continues so. Is this owing to a
sympathy of the mucous membrane of the stomach with the mechanical
relaxation of the external cuticle by a moister atmosphere, as is seen in
the corrugated cuticle of the hands of washing-women? or does it sympathize
with the mucous membrane of the lungs, which must be affected along with
the mucus on its surface by the respiration of a moister atmosphere?

* * * * *

SUPPLEMENT TO CLASS IV.

_Sympathetic Theory of Fever._

As fever consists in the increase or diminution of direct or reverse
associated motions, whatever may have been the remote cause of them, it
properly belongs to the fourth class of diseases; and is introduced at the
end of the class, that its great difficulties might receive elucidation
from the preceding parts of it. These I shall endeavour to enumerate under
the following heads, trusting that the candid reader will discover in these
rudiments of the theory of fever a nascent embryon, an infant Hercules,
which Time may rear to maturity, and render serviceable to mankind.

I. Simple fever of two kinds.
II. Compound fever.
III. Termination of the cold fit.
IV. Return of the cold fit.
V. Sensation excited in fever.
VI. Circles of associated motions.
VII. Alternations of cold and hot fits.
VIII. Orgasm of the capillaries.
IX. Torpor of the lungs.
X. Torpor of the brain.
XI. Torpor of the heart and arteries.
XII. Torpor of the stomach and intestines.
XIII. Case of continued fever explained.
XIV. Termination of continued fever.
XV. Inflammation excited in fever.
XVI. Recapitulation.

I. _Simple fever._

1. When a small part of the cutaneous capillaries with their mucous or
perspirative glands are for a short time exposed to a colde