‘ EPI. | 124 
would it avail? What do those specalations avail! 
Ican in my conscience only teach you that epi- 
spastics raise blisters, and blisters are serviceable, 
as experience has instructed, in certain diseases 
and affections which will be enumerated briefiy 
here, and more in detail in the lectures. I will 
forego this duty a moment to offer you a quotation 
from the philosophic, erudite and tasteful Darwin, 
_ who refers the class to his secernentia. ae 
‘* But a blister acts with more permanent and- 
certain effect by stimulating a part of the skin, and 
thence affecting the whole of it, and of the sto- 
mach by association, and thence removes the most 
obstinate heartburns and vomitings. From this 
the principal use of blisters is understood, which 
is to invigorate the exertions of the arterial and 
lymphatic vessels of the skin, producing an in- 
crease of insensible perspiration, and of cutaneous 
absorption ; and to increase the action of the sto- 
mach, and the consequent power of digestion ; and 
thence by sympathy to excite all the other irritative 
motions : hence they relieve pains of the cold kind, — 
which originate from defect of motion ; not from 
their introducing a greater pain, as some have 
imagined, but by stimulating the torpid vessels 
into their usual action ; and thence increasing the 
action and consequent warmth of the whole skin, 
and of all the parts which are associated with it.’ 
If there is a theory of the operation of blisters 
on the diseased and healthy animal system to which 
I can subscribe, it is the foregoing. Like a jewel- 
ed watch, the pivot of its *‘ wheel within a wheel,” 
tarns on that lustrous doctrine of healthy and mor- 
bid physiology--sympathy. It is a harmonious con- 
_ sent of associated actions, voluntary and involunta- 
ry inhealth: and sympathising acquiescence in dis-— 
ordered function, or associated action. Brown’sand” 
Cullen’s theories, in Europe, andthe ‘ morbid ex- 
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