ERUPTIVE FEVERS. 1^1 



the effect immediately arising from it during the operation of 

 the disease, may be a matter of some curiosity, but it is not ne- 

 cessary here to determine it. 



DCXLII. If the blood be drawn from a vein during the 

 measles, with the circumstances necessary to favour the separa- 

 tion of the gluten, this always appears separated, and lying on 

 the surface of the crassamentum, as in inflammatory diseases. 



DCXLIII. For the most part the measles, even when vio- 

 lent, are without any putrid tendency ; but in some cases such a 

 tendency appears, both in the course of the disease, and espe- 

 cially after the ordinary course of it is finished. See Dr. Wat- 

 son, in London Medical Observations, Vol. IV. art. xi. 



DCXLIV. From what is delivered, from DCXXXVIL to 

 DCXLII., it will appear, that the measles are distinguished by 

 a catarrhal affection, and by an inflammatory diathesis to a con- 

 siderable degree ; and therefore the danger attending them arises 

 chiefly from the coming on of a pneumonic inflammation. 



DCXLV. From this consideration it will be obvious, that 

 the remedies especially necessary, are those which may obviate 

 and diminish the inflammatory diathesis ; and therefore, in a 

 particular manner, blood-letting. This remedy may be em- 

 ployed at any time in the course of the disease, or after its ordi- 

 nary course is finished. It is to be employed, more or less, ac- 

 cording to the urgency of the symptoms of fever, cough, and 

 dyspnoea ; and generally may be employed very freely. But, as 

 the symptoms of pneumonic inflammation seldom come on dur- 

 ing the eruptive fever ; and, as this fever is sometimes violent 

 immediately before the eruption, though a sufficiently mild dis- 

 ease be to follow ; so bleeding is seldom very necessary during 

 the eruptive fever, and may often be reserved for the periods of 

 greater danger which are perhaps to ensue. 



" The remedy on which we are chiefly to depend is blood- 

 letting ; this is now so well known, that if there is any danger 

 or error in our practice, it is in the carrying it to excess. I 

 have known a child of four or five years bled eight or nine 

 times in the measles : as I was not present in the case, I can- 

 not say how far the symptoms required it, but I am apt to sus- 

 pect that it was greatly in excess, and the child's constitution 

 was for many years afterwards considerably weakened by it. I 



