AND ANIMAL LIFE. 199 



than ordinary. We have many symptoms pre- 

 sent which clearly show that the lungs are con- 

 gested, and are otherwise very unfavourably cir- 

 cumstanced for the production of animal heat. 



CCXXIV. The great heat of the surface has 

 induced many practitioners to try depletion at a 

 period of the fever much later than it is generally 

 recommended and found beneficial. When at- 

 tending, as a student, the Dispensary of Dr 

 MACKINTOSH of Edinburgh, I had an opportunity 

 of seeing a great deal of continued fever, and I 

 remember one case which will enable me to illus- 

 trate the present subject. I was called to visit a 

 boy who had been ill for two or three days, and 

 found that he was affected with the fever at that 

 time prevalent in the city. Eight or ten ounces 

 of blood were abstracted ; purgatives, aperients, 

 and blisters were employed till the eleventh or 

 twelfth day, according to the urgency of the 

 symptoms. At this time his respiration be- 

 came so difficult, accompanied with a fixed pain 

 in the chest, and with great dryness and heat of 

 the surface of the body, that I thought it advisa- 

 ble to bleed. Eight ounces of blood were drawn, 

 with slight relief to the breathing ; but the de- 

 pletion was succeeded, in less than a quarter of 

 an hour, by subsultus tendinum. The boy ulti- 

 mately recovered, but the unfavourable symp- 

 toms developed on the second depletion warned 

 me of the danger of bleeding, however the symp- 



