Fever is a curative process, a defensive process, a life-saving expedient. Although the medical profession has taught for three thousand years that fever is the enemy of life and that it kills, during the past few years they have acknowledged its beneficient character.

   Outside the ranks of the medical profession the true character of fever has been known, proclaimed and acted upon for over a hundred years. The Hygienists, Physio-Medicalists, Hydropaths (water cure-ists), Eclectics, and Naturopaths have all been roundly denounced as ignorant quacks for over a hundred years, by the medical profession, for declaring fever to be a curative expediency.

   In his autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini tells how he was afflicted with "pocks," went shooting in the marshes, contracted a fever and was cured. Dr. Wagner-Jauregg noticed similar occurrences and was led to experiment with induced "malaria" to produce the same "cures." Since he was not hanged nor shot, as others who kill their fellow men are, but was allowed to go on maiming and killing them, others followed his lead and now the "fever cure" is much talked of.

   In fact the "fever cure" bids fair to become a "cure-all." It is now used in cases of gonorrhea, St. Vitus dance, arthritis, the heart wreck "caused by the rheumatic state," eye infections, undulant fever, cancer, tuberculosis, menengitis, neuritic pain, and certain diseases of childhood; although it was pointed out at the First International Congress on Fever Therapy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, March 31, 1937, that "in all cases", "definite conclusions must await the test of time."

   About the year 1927, Dr. Morris Nath, Pathologist at Middletown (New York) State Hospital for the Insane, speaking before an assemblage of Homeopathic physicians, declared that seventy percent of fifty-three cases treated since "last July", for paresis, by the "malaria treatment", showed "marked improvement." He said the "malaria treatment" is a harsh treatment, despite the finding of the German experiments, "which would seem to suggest this treatment for the disease." He thinks it is too harsh for private patients but recommended experimentation with the treatment upon the helpless inmates in the state institutions.

   The experiments have gone on and de Kruif, in writing of the "malaria fever" cure, says that in certain hospitals, this drastic treatment killed ten out of every hundred folks it "set out to cure." He thinks it splendid that under the care of Wagner-Jauregg and of O'Leary of the Mayo Clinic, "less than one out of a hundred died from the malaria." He tells us that the "malaria" treatment, "even in the most skilled hands" is a two-edged sword. The fever often gets out of hand. Becker says the "malaria" treatment is somewhat dangerous, while Palm tells us that though the "malaria fever" cures a majority of cases treated by it, it presents problems of its own. De Kruif says that ten percent of victims refuse to develop "malaria" when inoculated. Remission of paretic symptoms is claimed in only thirty percent of cases treated by means of "malaria treatment".

   Dissatisfaction with the "malaria cure" led to experiments with other means of producing fever. Among the methods used have been prolonged hot baths, getting the patients hot inside electric blankets, inoculating them with typhoid vaccine, inoculating them with proteins (albuminous substances), diathermy, hot air, (hot blasts), hot humid air, and radio shortwave. For nearly four hundred years doctors have sent their "syphilitic" patients to "health resorts" or to hot springs to take hot baths, or have given them sweat baths at home. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sweat baths were commonly used. During those centuries baking "syphilitics" in huge ovens was a widely employed method of treatment. Becker says that "among primitive peoples the afflicted ones were buried in hot sand for days at a time."

   Artificial fever produced by diathermy is described by de Kruif as dangerous, terribly uncomfortable and as producing "hellish burns." He says a patient has to be crazy to endure it.

   The accidental discovery that the radio short-wave will produce fever by merely remaining in the invisible field of the machine's short-wave electric energy, without touching the electric gadgets, led to much experimenting with this agent and to the production of an apparatus called, by the inventors, the radio-therm, a coffin-like cabinet in which many met their death, while many more were badly burned.

   The workings of this machine were "exasperatingly uncertain," in that the fever "stoked up" was "now feeble, now ferocious, genuinely unpredictable, and invincibly uncomfortable." The electric energy "arcs" in the sweat pools that form under the arms, between the thighs, and over the patient. "Like buzzing zips," says de Kruif, "the electric fire" thus formed "burned holes in their skins." He says that "many a paretic wreck suffered frightful skin burns" in the experiments with the radio-wave machines. "Fever lighted by this or that gadget got out of control, killing not a few who burned to death by an awful internal fire."

   De Kruif has graphically portrayed the development of "machine fever treatment," which, he calls "hot science," and "dangerous hot healing." He declares the team of experimenters who carried on the "bold experiment" using "human experimental animals," took "stern chances," but he omits to emphasize that they took the chances with the lives of their patients and not with their own lives. Their patients were guinea pigs and some of them died under the torture in the coffin-shaped "cantakerous radio-therm." He says that the experimenters risked burning their human guinea pigs and that they did "badly burn some of them." One feels that he correctly styled them "fever maniacs" and that what he calls their "fanatical persistence" in their experiments was really fanatical.

   Due to a sudden failure of an air-conditioned radio-therm, which caused the experimenters to continue to send air into the box to prevent the patient from knowing the apparatus had quit, it was discovered that blasts of hot air would send the temperature up and keep it up. With nothing but "circulating moist, very hot, too hot air" they now "fever their victims." The moister the air they blow around the victims in the coffin-like box, the less heat is needed, because every increase in humidity lessens heat radiation from the body. This form of "fever treatment" can be controlled better than any other method yet employed.

   But it must not be supposed that because the "machine fever" is more easily controlled than the "malaria cure" or the radio short wave that it is safe or pleasant treatment. De Kruif describes the victim in the box as the "threatened one" and explains that those who are treated by the "friendly fire" are held close to a heat "that can kill as well as cure." He admits that the subject of the "hot science" suffers in the box and that the treatment is perilous. He says that they are "fevered' within a few degrees of death — death from heat stroke. Dr. Walter Simpson says that modern fever treatment is not less serious than a major surgical operation.

   The greatest care is required to avoid killing the patient, for the treatment demands a "peculiar new high technique" and constant vigilance both of the patient and the machine. The pounding pulse at the patient's temple is constantly watched by the nurse. She must watch for signs of a failing heart, must guard against the fever going too high, and must dope the patient to keep him "comfortable." Nothing is more common than human negligence and carelessness is easy. Every patient who goes into one of the coffin-shaped boxes places his life in the hands of the attendants. Even at its best it is very dangerous, while de Kruif says that in the hands of those not expert in its use the artificial fever treatment is still outlandish. De Kruif wants the public to finance the quick training of thousands of doctors and nurses in this devilish work.

   It may be well to ask what good may be expected of this "hot science." De Kruif himself says that six years ago the machine-fever treatment was only at the stage of groping experiment and that even now, "the hot science must still be called an experiment." It is certainly too early to ask the public to finance the training of a new species of chef to roast the sick.

   The machine-fever method is said to possess certain advantages over the "malaria cure". "Malaria treatment" requires the patient to spend weeks in bed. The machine treatment does not. The machine-fever is more easily controlled. Another advantage possessed by the machine-fever over the "malaria cure" is that in "machine-fever" the "syphilis fighting" chemicals may be used simultaneously with the fever; whereas with the "malaria cure" the chemicals "kill the fire" the "malaria stokes up" in the victim.

   Fever alone, without chemicals, says Simpson and Kendall, will not "cure syphilis." They find, they say, however that so long as they toast their victims, they require "much less of the dangerous arsenic" and that the bulk of the drug given may consist of "the much less poisonous bismuth." De Kruif thinks the fever treatment is good when combined with the old drug "remedies."

   It is believed that the spirochetes cause "syphilis." This lacks proof. It is believed that the spirochetes die when the body temperature reaches 107 degrees. This belief also lacks confirmation. Indeed it is highly improbable that a temperature so low will kill these germs. We may be certain that if the spirochetes cause "syphilis" and the high fever kills them there would be no need for the resort to poisonous drugs But the fever treatment is always combined with "mild harmless doses of arsenical drugs and bismuth."

   It is claimed that "syphilitics" who cannot stand the smallest dose of arsenic under ordinary conditions, stand arsenical treatments well if the arsenic is shot "into their arm: while they are at the height of their machine-fever. It may be possible that the body defends itself better against arsenic a a high temperature than at a low one. Be this as it may the reader should readily see the risk the experimenter took with the lives of their human guinea pigs when they injected arsenic into the bodies of those known beforehand no to be able to tolerate even small doses of the poison.

   It is claimed that experiments now in process show that machine-fever treatments enormously shorten the fight against "early syphilis." The patient is thus given fewer doses of arsenic and bismuth. In other experiments now being carried out, shorter hours of fever treatment seem to work as well as the longer treatment. This means less torture by "hot science." It is to be hoped the downward trend of these experiments will continue until they cease all treatment.

   It is well to keep in mind, however, that all these "cures" of "early syphilis" are determined by changes in the serologic reactions as revealed by the Kahn and Wassermann tests. That is, the "cures" are fictional.

   Great caution is necessary in selecting cases for "fever treatment." Only those who are strong enough to endure the ordeal can be given the treatment. Many persons with paresis and locomotor ataxia, and these are the conditions in which this form of treatment is claimed to be most beneficial, have other physical disabilities, such as heart trouble, high blood pressure, tuberculosis etc., that make the fever ordeal doubly dangerous. Palm says that "the treatment must be given in a hospital where the personnel and equipment are capable of meeting any complications which may result."

   He also tells us that the "mortality rate among fever patients is still high, and the percentage of cases in which it can be employed with safety is relatively small." It is obvious that so dangerous a "remedy" cannot be universally applied and that at all times it is likely to do more harm than good. Parran thus describes a case he watched: "Two nurses were standing solicitously by, however, to lay cold compresses upon his fevered brow, to give him ice water and whiskey to sip through a straw, to watch his blood pressure and pulse for any signs of heart failure." He adds: "First results are good, but for anything short of a beginning paresis or a serious gonorrheal complication, I personally would not want to subject myself, to this near-lethal temperature." The treatment is very expensive and inconvenient. The fever machines are expensive and the cost of operation is great. Treatment must be given in a hospital by specialists in this work. Perhaps this is well — it will serve to protect thousands from its' dangers.

   Palm says, "malaria and artificial fevers are now being used in the treatment of some cases of locomotor ataxia with varying degrees of success. The results in these cases do not lead us to believe however, that there is any great hope that the toll of locomotor ataxia can be materially reduced in this way." He says further: "while artificial fever offers a ray of hope to paresis victims this treatment falls far short of the ideal goal of modern medicine. It results in great discomfort of the patient, even to the extent of spasms and delirium. In the hands of a quack or a bungling physician, it may easily be fatal." He thinks that "most doctors recommend artificial fever to their patients only when they are certain that all other means of treatment have been exhausted and that fever offers the only possible solution of an almost hopeless condition."

   If the treatment offers a solution in such hopeless cases, where other methods are of no avail, surely it would constitute a better solution of more hopeful conditions where other methods are thought to still offer hope.

   We do not have to assume the existence of a disease called "syphilis," nor do we have to assume that the patient's troubles are caused by an evil germ, in order to recognize that increased temperature causes rapid changes in living cells. We have long known that nerves regenerate more rapidly at a high than at a low temperature. For many years Dr. Tilden has emphasized the great value of much heat to the patient. He even says bake them at times. But it is one thing to raise the temperature of the body and another to roast it. It should be understood, too, that the increase in body temperature in natural fever is but one part of a complicated series of correlated and complex changes — changes in metabolism, circulation, respiration, alterations in the physical and chemical structure of the blood and tissues, etc., and the local changes at the point of injury — all of which collectively constitute the process of cure. Machine fever does not duplicate natural fever.

   Finally, in Oct. 1937 Dr. Paul A. O'Leary, of the Mayo Clinic, who is an outstanding experimenter with fever treatment, told members of the American Medical Association that "artificial fever treatment for syphilis widely heralded when first developed, has not stood the test of time, as well as the chemicals, arsphenamine and bismuth." He added that "even those physicians who were most enthusiastic about machines for inducing fever to rout syphilis from the body, now recommend, as do those who use malaria to induce fever, the use of arsphenamines and bismuth during or after the fever treatment in all types of syphilis." He said: "Besides malaria and electric fever machine, typhoid vaccine and hot baths have been found helpful in treating some cases of syphilis No one knows exactly why any of these methods is helpful" This condensed summary of his paper is taken from the Nov. 1937, issue of the Scientific American.

   Thus another "cure" has gone glimmering through the things that were.