The following pages are the result of investigations and the collection of facts and arguments from a great variety of sources, originally made and presented in aid of the discussions on the subject during the past six or eight months.

The most eminent and reliable authorities for nearly half a century, that is, from 1832 to 1865, including the late reports from India, have been carefully examined, and such late discoveries, facts, and arguments collected, as seemed to throw light upon the subject, or in any degree to indicate or direct to a general principle of practice.

The various experiments instituted for the cure of the disease have been carefully investigated, and the principle evolved explained whenever any advantage was derived from the same.

In all these we have diligently searched for the cause of the failure of "remedial agents," so uniformly admitted, and have endeavored to present the results clearly and fully in the body of the work.

Our statistics are collected from reliable sources, are very brief, and introduced in aid of the main object,—the establishment of a general principle of practice.

The different modes of practice are from the most distinguished authors of the different Schools of Medicine, and non-professional gentlemen; condensed and exhibited mainly in their own language, to show their conformity or non-conformity to the Pathology of the disease.

In all we have kept constantly in view the pathology of the disease, whose "dictates" have governed us in the exhibition and establishment of a general principle of rational practice, confirmed by observation and experience, which, if accepted and carried out by the profession, we hope and trust will save a very large proportion of those attacked by "this most acute of acute diseases."

AUTHORS.