102 ORGANISED FLUIDS. 



an advanced period of their attack, corresponds with the 

 division of hemorrages into active and passive ; the former, or 

 sthenic type, denoting the active, and the latter, or asthenic, 

 the passive hemorrhages. 



In disorders in which usually we have no excess of the red 

 globules, but in which the fibrin invariably exceeds its usual 

 quantity, as the inflammatory, and in affections in which the 

 red element is constantly deficient, but in which the fibrin 

 retains its proper proportion, as in anaemic states, and es- 

 pecially chlorosis, we find that hemorrhages are of very 

 rare occurrence, and hence again we are led to recognise the 

 accuracy of the statement, that the essential conditions for 

 the occurrence of hemorrhages are an excess of the red cor- 

 puscles, as well as in certain cases a deficiency of the spon- 

 taneously coagulable element of the blood, viz. the fibrin. 



Between the condition of the blood, in which there is a 

 deficiency of fibrin, as in most fevers, and that state of the 

 system which occupied so much of the attention of the 

 ancient humeral pathologist, and which has been denominated 

 the putrid, an exact identity exists, and the greater the 

 depression in the scale of the fibrin, the more manifest does 

 the putridity become. While the blood is still circulating 

 within its vessels, we can scarcely conceive of its becoming 

 putrid ; nevertheless, so great in some cases is the deficiency 

 of fibrin, and so proportionate the consequent tendency to 

 putridity, that even during life certain symptoms indicative 

 of this condition become manifest, as the extreme prostration 

 of the strength, the foetor which belongs to all the ex- 

 cretions, and the vital principle having escaped, the external 

 signs of decomposition almost immediately appear. 



The characters of the blood in hemorrhages scarcely differ 

 from those which we have pointed out as belonging to it in 

 fevers ; from the small quantity of fibrin, and the excess of 

 red globules, we find that the clot is large, ill-formed, very soft, 

 and never covered with the buffy coating, and that finally, in 

 a very short time, it undergoes almost entire dissolution, the 

 only trace of solid matter in the blood consisting of a few 

 shreds of fibrin. 



