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small simple vermiform Annelide has a dark colour 

 and forbidding aspect, and inhabits the foul stagnant 

 marshes and pools of fresh water throughout Europe. It 

 perforates the skin of animals by its three sharp teeth, and 

 by a constant sucking from the wound it fills its body with 

 their blood. From the smallness and superficial nature 

 of their wound, the mildness and safety of their opera- 

 tion, the facility of regulating the quantity of blood they 

 extract, and the local nature of the depletion, they are in 

 most inflammatory affections more convenient and effica- 

 cious than the lancet, much safer in their operation, and, 

 in many cases, nothing could supply their place. 



I shall not here make any allusion to the innumerable 

 applications of animals and animal substances to the cure 

 of disease, recorded in the writings of the ancients, founded 

 for the most part on superstitious notions or on virtues 

 altogether imaginary, and which the more scientific prin- 

 ciples of modern medicine have entirely discarded from 

 practice. They will be found recorded in the Natural 

 History of Pliny, or scattered through the writings of 

 Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Avicenna, and other 

 Greek and Arabian physicians. 



Man, though the most naked, helpless, and delicate of 

 animals, is the most extensively distributed over the globe, 

 and enjoys health and vigour in the torrid, temperate, and 

 frigid Zones, from the 74th degree of North Latitude, to 

 the 56th degree South of the Equator. Without fur, fea- 

 thers, scales, shells, or other natural covering, he is enabled 

 to endure the most opposite extremes of climate by the re- 

 markably accommodating power of his constitution, and 

 by his superior sagacity in devising artificial means to 

 defend his frame against all the vicissitudes of the seasons, 

 and the varieties of climate. He covers the nakedness of 

 his body with spoils from almost every class of animals. 

 The wool, the furs, and the skins of Quadrupeds are 

 manufactured into garments, or are worn in their natural 

 state. The plumage of Birds, the scaly coverings of Rep- 



