174 ADDISON^ ON BLOOD-CORPUSCLES. 



materially from tlie first case. It has arisen not from the 

 circulation of blood through places of local disease, not by 

 an avenue v, ithin the person, but from without ; some form 

 of inoculation, or from inhaling an atmosphere rendered 

 poisonous by the first case of fever. This, therefore, is a 

 fever of the first class ; and the person, prior to the fever, 

 being in good health, its stages and periods we may expect 

 wiU be better marked, and its issue the more hopeful. 



Again, a powerful mental shock, or some other accident, 

 may be productive of unhealthy action in the recent wound 

 of the parturient uterus ; the discharges are off'ensive, and 

 puerperal fever may follow from blood circulating through 

 places of degenerating anatomical lesion. Upon the same 

 principle as before, this we should consider as a fever of the 

 second class, complexioned by the puerperal state. But 

 shoald another case of puerperal fever follow in the same 

 building or locality, as a consequence of the first case, this 

 would arise not through blood infection from a prior lesion 

 within the person, but from inoculation or through the air. 

 The latter case would difi'er, therefore, in an important par- 

 ticular from the first case, and we should consider it under 

 the first category. 



Upon the whole subject, then, phenomena of contagious 

 fevers corroborate the proposition in discussion. To distin- 

 guish a pathology of the fluid from disease of the corpuscles 

 of blood, is warranted by their very difl'erent properties. It 

 recognises the relation of the blood- corpuscles to other 

 cellular bodies, and is a means of interpreting some of the 

 difiiculties which appertain to the consideration of blood- 

 diseases. It gives us a clearer -view of the domain of thera- 

 peutics, because it is applicable in explanation of the action 

 of food and air — medicines and poisons upon the blood. 



To recapitulate : Substances taken into the stomach — 

 diet, medicines, and poisons — communicate their qualities to 

 the fluid of the blood. Air, and miasms in solution in the 

 air, aftect specially the red corpuscles of the blood. Gout, 

 scurvy, diarrhoea, eruptions, and other local inflammatory 

 disorders without fever, occasioned by unwholesome diet, 

 arise from changes in the quality of the fluid of the blood. 



Fevers consequent upon inhaling an infectious atmosphere 

 upon inoculation or contagion, arise from injury to the cor- 

 puscles of the blood. 



Symptoms of fever are superadded to diseases of unwhole- 

 some diet when morbid qualities of the liquor sanguinis, 

 pronounced at flrst by local inflammation, implicate the 

 corpuscles of blood. 



