TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 69 



natural, but becomes fuller and stronger ; or in others (cliiefly 

 of the head and abdomen likewise), when it is slower than 

 natural, small and sharp, and becomes more frequent and fuller 

 after the evacuation." 



The action of other remedies is facilitated by blood-letting. 

 " By lessening that morbid impetus of blood and increased tone 

 of the vascular coats by which, during the state of inflammatory 

 fever, the natural secretions are apparently impeded, and at 

 the same time promoting absorption into the blood, as loss of 

 blood is well known to do, it favours the effect of all other 

 evacuating remedies ; and further, by its precedence it renders 

 certain remedies — as mercury and opium — decidedly beneficial, 

 which otherwise would have proved either inoperative or abso- 

 lutely injurious." 



To this view is opposed that of the late school of therapeutics ; 

 and by the followers of that school it is believed that all 

 bleedings and other antiphlogistic remedies are entirely opposed 

 to a sound pathology. Dr. Bennett says, that when an exuda- 

 tion has once occurred, in order that it may be removed, it 

 must undero^o certain chancres or transformations, for which an 

 increased supply of blood to the part is absolutely necessary ; 

 that blood-letting can in no way lessen the amount of blood in 

 an inflamed part, or assist in the excretion of morbid products 

 from tlie vital fluid ; that the character of the pulse cannot be 

 a safe guide to the propriety of bleeding, as its condition is the 

 result, and not the cause, of the inflammation; and that the 

 increased throbbing and circulation of blood about an inflamed 

 part is a result of the inflammatory process — a wise provision, 

 as he says, of nature, to further vital changes, and one which 

 ought to be assisted rather than opposed. Such are the views 

 of, first, the antiphlogistic school, ^nd, secondly, of those who 

 hold that it is impossible to cut short an infiammation, and 

 make it the rule of practice to further the natural changes 

 necessary for the removal of the products of the inflammatory 

 process. 



I must confess that I can neither assent to the views of the 

 extreme antiphlogistians nor to those of the writers who con- 

 demn bleeding altogether, being quite confident that I have seen 

 many cases of congestive inflammatory disease cut short by a 

 timely abstraction of Hood. I have experience of the method 



