A Treatise on the Fevers of Jamaica Author:Robert Jackson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II CHAP. II. OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PERIODICAL FEVERS. (i) A Knowledge of the types and periods of fevers, though fo neceflary to be well underftood ... more »by thofe who pretend to cure the difeafe, has unfortunately been little attended to by the practitioners of Jamaica. In that country, I met with fome who were able to foretell the returns of the fmgle tertian; but I met with none, and I have good reafon to believe that there adlually were few, who troubled themfelves about forms of greater complication. There were many, on the contrary, who, blinded by theories of accumulated bile, ridiculed altogether the idea of this ftated regularity in the movements of nature. To enter into a difpute with fuch would be labour loft. The exiftence of a regular type in the fevers of the Weft Indies does not admit of a doubt, yet we muft not forget to mention, that thofc types are traced with greater difficulty in that country, where re- mHfions are obfcure, than in others, whereevery paroxyfm is ufhered in by a cold fit. In Jamaica it is impoflible to follow them without the moft careful attention, or perhaps to attain a clear and fyftematic knowledge of them, without writing down and analyzing many of thofe cafes which occur in practice. I remember to have been irn- prefled with the idea, at a very early period, that one obfervation made by myfelf would in reality be more ufeful than twenty equally important in themfelves, which I only retained in my memory from reading. Convinced of this truth I ceafed to look for information in books, from the time that I arrived in the Weft Indies -, but, trufting wholly to my own experience, wrote down minutely, in the prefence of the fick, the hiftory and cure of the moft important cafes of fever that occurred to me. At ftated times I reviewed that ...« less