of Loudon- County, in Virginia. 21 



tedious illness, he recovered ; but I am well satisfied* 

 that he might have been restored to health in a few days, 

 if he had not been bled. 



As indirect debility of the exhalent vessels is evidently 

 the cause of sweat in fevers ; as this state of debility is 

 reproduced and augmented by every succeeding parox- 

 ysm, and the vessels consequently made more lax and 

 permeable to the perspirable matter, is it not manifest, 

 that, if the system be much depleted before the exhalents 

 are sufficiently debilitated (or compound debility pro- 

 duced therein), we shall ever find it difficult, if not im- 

 possible, to procure that most salutary of all evacuations, 

 a free perspiration ? But whether or no theoretical dis- 

 cussions will establish the fact, experience sufficiently 

 proves it : for I have very seldom been able to procure 

 a free perspiration, in any case, when venesection was 

 performed early in the disease ; and, if this operation is 

 not proper then, surely it is not adviseable at all. I 

 have, when called in one dangerous case, when the pa- 

 tient had been bled, repleted the system with nourish- 

 ment, and thus procured perspiration after every other 

 means had failed ; and my patient happily recovered, 

 though her fever was, at the same time, very considera- 

 ble/ 



I must, therefore, beg leave to inform those practi- 

 tioners who are such zealous advocates for venesection 

 in fevers, that the best and safest way to diminish re-ac- 

 tion is to remove the cause, which is not excess of blood, 

 but febrile ififcction. Blood-letting can, in no way, ex- 

 tract the stimulus of infection from the system, than in 



