A Treatise on Fever

by Southwood Smith

CHAPTER VIII.

Of the Causes of Fever.

The causes of fever are of two kinds; first, those which immediately produce the disease, and secondly, those which bring the system into a condition capable of being affected by the first: the former, are called the exciting, the latter, the predisposing causes: a third has been spoken of in relation to this as well as to other diseases, namely, the proximate. But what is really meant by the proximate cause of disease (if the term have any meaning) is the condition of the organ, or of the system, produced by the operation of the exciting cause: this term, therefore, designates an effect, not in any proper sense, a cause: it relates to the disease itself, not to that which produces it.