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46
Sixthly—We have to inquire whether we are
really acquainted with the true nature of the disorder.
Hasty opinions have already been formed of it,
and we have been told that it is a sort of enteric
fever; but the absence of the chief characteristics
of that disease, as we see it in daily practice,
has led us to doubt this statement. The common
course of typhoid, or enteric fever, in the human
subject, is insidious and lingering ; and the malady
can hardly be called contagious, for it rarely or
never appears as an epidemic, but, on the contrary,
its habits are local, and they are determined by
certain conditions of filth; besides which, the
post-mortem appearances are always characteristic
of a diseased condition of the glands of the small
intestines. Nor is the malady like typhus, for
although it is highly infectious, and is accompanied
with a conjested state of the conjunctiva, yet it
differs from that disease in the profuse diarrhoea,
which is never seen in typhus. Some have thought
that it is a virulent form of influenza ; others that
it is a catarrhal, or mucous fever; while very
recently Dr. Murchison, who lias carefully studied
the disease, and examined it by the light of his
great knowledge of specific»fevers, considers that
it presents the strongest analogy to small-pox. It
is always accompanied with an eruption upon the
skin, and this eruption is either like the pustules
of small-pox or the vesicles of cow-pox. The two