CAL1EN'TES, a t. in Mexico, in the province of Zacatecas. It is situated in n. lat. 21° 53', and w_long. 101° 45', in a plain 6000 ft. above the sea-level, and on a stream of the same name, which is tributary to the Rio Grande de Santiago. It con tains a pop. of 20,000; and besides the cultivation of fields and gardens, the manu facture of woolen cloth is very considerable, and is carried on on the factory system. The t. is favorably situated for trade, as the great road from Mexico to Sonora and Durango is here crossed by that from San Louis Potosi to Guadalaxara. The environs abound in hot springs, from which the t. takes its name.
AGUE (felrris intermittens) is the common name for an intermitting fever, accompa nied by paroxysms or fits. Each fit is composed of three stages, the cold, the hot and the sweating stage. Before a fit, the patient has a sensation of debility and distress about the epigastrium ; feels weak and disinclined for exertion; the surface of his body becomes cold, and the bloodless skin shrivels up into the condition termed goose-skin (cutis anser Ma). A cold sensation creeps up the back, and spreads over the body; the patient shiv ers, his teeth chatter, his knees knock together; his face, lips, ears and nails turn blue; he has pains in his head, back and loins. This condition is succeeded by flushes of heat, the coldness gives place to warmth, and the surface regains its natural appearance. The warmth continues to increase, the face becomes red and turgid, the head aches, the breathing is deep and oppressed, the pulse full and strong. The third stage now comes on; the skin becomes soft and moist, the pulse resumes its natural force and frequency, and a copious sweat breaks from the whole body.
These paroxysms recur at regular intervals. The interval between them is called "an intermission." When they occur every day, thepatient has quotidian A.; every second day, tertian; and when they are absent for two days, quartan. All ages are liable to this disease; and a case is on record of a pregnant woman having a tertian A.which attacked her of course every other day; but on the alternate days, when she was well, she felt that the child also had A., although the paroxysms did not coincide with her own.
The exciting causes of this disease are invisible effluvia from the surface of the earth (marsh miasmata). A certain degree of temperature seems necessary—higher than 60° Fahrenheit—for the production of the poison. It does not exist within the arctic circle, nor does it appear in the cold seasons of temperate climates, and seldom beyond the 56° of n. lat. (Watson). It also requires moisture, In England A. is almost exclusively con fined to the eastern coast; and the extension of drainage has rendered A. far more rare than before. James I. and .Oliver Cromwell died of A. contracted in London. The Pon tine marshes to the s. of Rome have long been notorious as a source of aguish fevers. Peat bog or moss is not productive of malaria, as in seen in parts of Ireland and Scotland. Neither is A. ever seen among the inhabitants of the Dismal Swamp—a moist tract of 150,000 acres on the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina in North America. The treatment of aguish fever consists generally in calomel given in purgative doses, followed by preparations of cinchona-bark, and in applying, during the paroxysm, external warmth to the body.