60 



DISEASES CLASS I. 2. 1. 



bora with the eruption on them. The blood in the small-pox will 

 not inoculate that disease, if taken before the commencement of 

 the secondary fever; as shewn in Sect. XXXIII. 2. 10. because 

 the contagious matt.er is not yet formed, but after it has been 

 oxygenated through the cuticle in the pustules, it becomes con- 

 tagious; and if it be then absorbed, as in the secondary fever, 

 the blood of the mother may become contagious, and infect the 

 child. The same mode of reasoning is applicable to the chicken - 

 pox. See Class IV. 3. 1. 7. 



15. Scorbutus. Sea-scurvy is caused by salt diet, the perpe- 

 tual stimulus of which debilitates the venous and absorbent sys- 

 tems; and may also be promoted by the sea-air, which is known 

 to be so injurious to most vegetables, which grow near the coasts, 

 and has been perhaps incautiously recommended to consumptive 

 patients. See Class II. 1. 6. 7. Hence the blood is imperfect- 

 ly taken up by the veins from the capillaries, whence brown 

 and black spots appear upon the skin without fever. The limbs 

 become livid and edematous, and lastly ulcers are produced from 

 deficient absorption. See Sect., XXXIII. 3. 2. and Class II. 1. 

 4. 13. For an account of the scurvy of the lungs, see Sect. 

 XXVII. 2. 



M. M. Fresh animal and vegetable food. Infusion of malt 

 New beer. Sugar. Wine. Steel. Bark. Sorbentia. Opium? 



16. Vibices. Extravasations of blood become black from their 

 being secluded from the air. The extravasation of blood in 

 bruises, or in some fevers, or after death in some patients, 

 especially in the parts which were exposed to pressure, is owing 

 to the fine terminations of the veins having been mechanically 

 compressed so as to prevent their absorbing the blood from the 

 capillaries, or to their inactivity from disease. The blood when 

 extravasated undergoes a chemical change before it is sufficient- 

 ly fluid to be taken up by the lymphatic absorbents, and in that 

 process changes its colour to green and then yellow. 



17. Petechice. Purple spots. These attend fevers with great 

 venous inirritability, and are probably formed by the inability 

 of a single termination of a vein, whence the corresponding 

 capillary becomes ruptured, and effuses the blood into the cellu- 

 lar membrane round the inert termination of the vein. This is 

 generally esteemed a sign of the putrid state of the blood, or that 

 state contrary to the inflammatory one. As it attends some in- 

 flammatory diseases which are attended with great inirritability, 

 as in the confluent small-pox. But it also attends the scurvy, 

 where no fever exists, and it therefore simply announces the in- 

 activity of the terminations of some veins; and is thence indeed 

 a bad symptom in fevers, as a mark of approaching inactivity of 



