THE BLOOD. 35 



In the first place, that inflammation really lessens the dis- 

 position to coagulate, will appear evident to every one who at- 

 tends to the jellying of such blood as has a crust. For in all 

 those cases the blood will be found to be longer in congealing, 

 than in its natural state. To this opinion I was first led by 

 attending to the phthisical patient's blood above mentioned; 

 but I have since made a comparison, which seems to prove the 

 fact. For, from a variety of experiments made on the blood of 

 persons nearly in health, or at least who had no inflammatory dis- 

 order, and no crust on their blood, I found that after being 

 taken from a vein, it began to jelly in about three minutes and 

 a half. The first appearance of coagulation was a thin film on 

 the surface near the air-bubbles, or near the edge of the basin ; 

 this film spread over the surface, and thickened gradually till 

 the whole was jellied, which was in about seven minutes after the 

 opening of the vein ; and in about ten or eleven the whole was 

 so firm, that, on cutting the cake, the gashes were immediately 

 filled up by the serum, which now began to separate from the 

 crassamentum. But in those persons whose blood had an in- 

 flammatory crust, the coagulation was much later; as will ap- 

 pear from the following experiments. 



EXPERIMENT XIII. 



I bled a woman who was seven months gone with child, and 

 the blood was received into a basin. In five minutes after the 

 vein was opened, a film first appeared ; but this spread so slowly, 

 that in ten minutes it did not cover the whole surface ; in fif- 

 teen minutes it had nearly spread over the surface ; but the 

 rest of the blood was quite fluid, at least for some depth, and 

 even in half an hour it was not so firmly jellied as it was after- 

 wards. In this case there was a very thick and strong crust 

 or size. 



EXPERIMENT XIV. 



Having bled a person with a violent rheumatic pain in his 

 breast, the blood was received into three teacups, and each of 

 them had afterwards a crust. In the first I observed the pro- 

 gress of the coagulation as follows : The beginning of the co- 

 agulation was not marked, but at the end of half an hour the 

 film was not thicker than common writing-paper ; and this 



