346 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



with the remedies already mentioned, to employ stimulants of va- 

 rious kinds ; but I am disposed to think them generally hurtful ; 

 and they must be so, wherever the fulness of the vessels, and 

 the impetus of the blood in these, is to be diminished. Upon 

 this principle it is therefore agreed, that stimulants are abso- 

 lutely improper in what is supposed to be a sanguine apoplexy ; 

 but they are commonly supposed to be proper in the serous. 

 If, however, we be right in alleging that this also commonly de- 

 pends upon a plethoric state of the blood-vessels of the brain, 

 stimulants must be equally improper in the one case as in the 

 other. 



MC XXX VI I. It may be argued, from the almost universal 

 employment of stimulants, and sometimes with seeming advan- 

 tage, that they may not be so hurtful as my notions of the causes 

 of apoplexy lead me to suppose. But this argument is, in 

 several respects, fallacious ; and particularly in this, that, in 

 a disease which, under every management, often proceeds so 

 quickly to a fatal termination, the effects of remedies are not to 

 be easily ascertained. 



MC XXXVI II. I have now mentioned the several remedies 

 which I think adapted to the cure of apoplexy arising from 

 compression, and should next proceed to treat of the cure of apo- 

 plexy arising from those causes that directly destroy the mo- 

 bility of the nervous power. But many of those causes are of- 

 ten so powerful, and thereby so suddenly fatal in their effects, 

 as hardly to allow of time for the use of remedies ; and such 

 cases, therefore, have been so seldom the subjects of practice, 

 that the proper remedies are not so well ascertained as to enable 

 me to say much of them here. 



MCXXXIX. When, however, the application of the causes 

 (MCXV.) is not so powerful as immediately to kill, and induces 

 only an apoplectic state, some efforts are to be made to obviate 

 the consequences, and to recover the patient: and, even in 

 some cases where the causes referred to, from the ceasing of the 

 pulse and of respiration, and from a coldness coming upon the 

 body, have induced an appearance of death ; yet, if these ap- 

 pearances have not continued long, there may be means of re- 

 covering the persons to life and health. I cannot, indeed, treat 

 this subject completely ; but, for the cure of apoplexy from se- 



