FEVER. By this term the A. V. renders the Heb. nnip (Deut. xxviii. 22), and the Gr. /ruff Tbs (Matt. viii. 14 ; Mark i. 3o ; Luke iv. 38 ; John iv. 52 ; Acts xxviii. 8). Both the Hebrew and Greek words are derived from the association of burning heat, which is the usual symptom of a fe brile attack ; the former coming from the verb nip, to burn, the latter from riip, fire: comp. Aram. 2'411E)N from Vt.!. Goth. brinzzo, from btinnan to burn, Lat. febris, and our own fever fromfervere. In Lev. xxvi. 16 the A. V. renders nnip by burning ague, but the renderingfirver seems better, as it is not necessarily the intermittent type of the disease which is thus designated. In all eastern climates febrile diseases are common, and in Syria and Palestine they are among the commonest and severest inflictions under which the inhabitants suf fer (Russell's Aleppo, hk. v. ch. 3). The fever under which Peter's wife's mother suffered is called by Lulce 7ruperbs ta-yas, and this has been regarded as having reference to the ancient scientific bution of fevers into the great and the less (Galen, diff. febr. see Wetstein, in /oc.), and as an instance of Luke's professional exactitude in de scribing disease. His use of ruperot in the plural in describing the disease under which the father of Publius laboured (Acts xxviii. S), has also been
adduced as an instance of the same kind, inasmuch as that disease was, from its being conjoined with dysentery, not a continuous, but an intermittent fever. To this much importance cannot he at tached, though it is probable that Luke, as a physician, would naturally use the technical lan guage of his profession in speaking of disease. In Dent. xxviii. 22, besides nnip, two diseases of the same class are mentioned, n61 (A. V. tion), and --1171ii (A. V. extreme burning). The LXX. renders the former of these by Al-yos, shiver hzg, and the latter by ipthco-bais, a word which is used by the Greek writers on medicine to designate quodvis Naturm irritamentum, quo sollicitata na tura ad obeundas motiones excitatur' (Foes, Oecon. II-Woe.) The former is probably the ague, a dis ease of frequent occurrence in the East ; and the latter probably dysentery, or some species of in flammatory fever. The Syr. version renders it by 1L-Ii=0-1.L.s, burning, which favours the latter suggestion. Rosenmiiller inclines to the opinion that it is the catarrhus szefocans, but this is with out probability. There is no ground for supposing it to be erisypelas.—W. L. A.