LOSS OF BLOOD. 1013 



maintain, with Dr. Billing, that their primary seat 

 is in the white medullary portion of the brain ; and 

 others, with Dr. M. Hall, that they originate in 

 the spinal marrow ; while Liebig refers them to 

 " an unequal degree of conducting power in the 

 nerves." 



But that they are owing, in nearly all cases, to 

 diminished vitality of the brain, will appear from 

 the following facts : 



1. That, in all the higher orders of animals, 

 convulsions are invariably produced by a great and 

 sudden loss of blood, as ivhen they are bled to death. 

 And it is generally known, that they often follow 

 excessive hemorrhage from the uterus after par- 

 turition. Why, then, is it that blood-letting is 

 often practised in cases of tetanus, hydrophobia,* 



in cases of paralysis ; but that as conia and the ticunas diminish 

 irritability, and produce paralysis, they should be given in tetanus 

 and hydrophobia. 



* With a candour and magnanimity worthy of commendation, 

 Dr. Elliottson gives it as his opinion, that he hastened the death 

 of a woman labouring under hydrophobia, by bleeding. Dr. 

 Clutterbuck also employs it in the same disease. Yet he acknow- 

 ledged before the Medical Society of London, a few years ago, 

 that everything had hitherto failed. And it has been said that all 

 the Sampson remedies in the materia medica should be separately 

 tried in succession. Such is the glorious uncertainty of physic, 

 that in the treatment of diseases, the most opposite remedies are 

 thrown into the stomach, " without rhyme or reason," so that 

 when the patient recovers, it is impossible to know what one has 

 produced the effect, or whether it was owing to the efforts of 

 nature, in spite of a confused and empirical practice. For ex- 

 ample, in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions of 1815, there is 



