94 TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 



fleam are not obtruded upon the view ; and such should 

 always be the practice,, excepting where the left jugular vein 

 has not been lost. 



The blood is the food of inflammation ; the more we re- 

 duce the one, the more shall we diminish the other : drawing 

 blood, therefore, is the most direct means we possess of 

 abating inflammation. Indeed, in practice, it is our most 

 decisive means of cure, and in some cases is the only remedy 

 we have it in our power to employ. In the acute stages of 

 inflammation of the lungs, neither internal nor external 

 medicaments will take efi'ect until we have abated the morbid 

 action by venesection; in cases which we dare not purge, 

 we commonly efi'ect nothing without the lancet. Although, 

 as certainly as we bleed we reduce the inflammation, yet we 

 do not effect a complete cure : no sooner are the vessels 

 emptied, than they are filled again. Do all we may, there 

 must be time allowed for the inflammatory action to subside : 

 it arose gradually, and gradually it will decline. Professor 

 Coleman, in a case of ophthalmia, tied the carotid and max- 

 illary arteries; he also cut through the vessels running into 

 the cornea, and afterwards made a line of division with a 

 red-hot iron between the cornea and the sclerotic coat. 

 Notwithstanding all these barbarities, however, in the course 

 of three or four days other vessels were re-produced, and 

 fresh inflammation started up in the eye. 



General Bleeding is distinguished from local bleedingj 

 by the quantity of blood drawn being so great as to affect 

 the system generally ; whereas, in the latter, the inflamed 

 part only is influenced by the abstraction of a much smaller 

 amount. In proportion as we reduce the quantity of blood 

 in the body, we diminish the power of the agents by which 

 inflammation is carried on; consequently, general bleeding 

 possesses the advantage of lessening the force by which 

 blood is propelled into the part, at the same time that it 

 abstracts blood from the place by creating a demand for it 

 in other parts. Local bleeding, on the other hand, is 

 designed simply to lessen the quantity of blood in the in- 

 flamed part. 



