Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/241

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CHRONO-THERMALISM.
237

York. The savans of that sect inform us that the characteristic appellation by which they choose to be known, is formed by connecting two Greek words: Chronos, meaning period, or time; and Therma, which signifies heat. These hitched together, with the addition of ism, make Chrono-Thermalism.

Their peculiar doctrines are, that disease is a unit, and that the human race is subject to only one disease, and that is Ague, or Intermittent Fever; that every other morbid manifestation is only another condition of the same affection; that the three stages observed in intermittent fever, if not so obvious in other forms, are nevertheless always present; that no morbid condition can exist without them; and that the proximate cause of disease is "a change of motion in the atoms of the organization, accompanied always by a change of temperature." The first stage of disease they call Depression, the second Accession, and the third Reaction. In the first, they suppose the organic atoms to be in a state of negative electricity; the second is the positive state; and the third is produced by the strug-