104 ORGANISED FLUIDS. 



less sudden, by the slow and. continued operation of any 

 cause which depresses the power of the nervous influence, so 

 as at length to effect the health prejudicially, cannot be 

 doubted. 



The proneness of children to hemorrhages, their liability 

 to febrile disorders, and the difficulty of restraining the 

 bleeding which flows from any breach of continuity which 

 the skin may have suffered, especially that of a leech-bite, in 

 infants, are well known. The state of the blood in children 

 is not commented upon by the talented authors to whom we 

 have had such frequent occasion to refer in their important 

 pathological essay on the blood : it is most probable, however, 

 that while its globular element is somewhat in excess, that 

 in fibrin it is equally deficient. 



With one other remark we will bring this short chapter 

 on hemorrhage to a conclusion, and proceed in the next 

 place to consider the effect produced upon the economy by 

 the deficiency of another element of the blood. The statisti- 

 cal and historical details of epidemics clearly prove that those 

 dire forms of disease, of which extensive and alarming 

 hemorrhages were such frequent complications, have in these 

 latter times become much more rare. This happy result is 

 doubtless due to the advances made in the arts and sciences, 

 and to their more extensive application in the improvement 

 of the hygienic condition of mankind. 



Decrease in the Normal Proportion of Albumen. 



It is now generally known, that the majority of cases of 

 dropsy depend upon a pathological alteration of some solid 

 organ of the body, as the heart and the liver ; most persons 

 are also aware of the fact that other cases of dropsy occur, 

 which do not arise from any such morbid organic condition, 

 but have their origin, according to MM. Andral and Ga- 

 varret, in a pathological^degeneration of one of the elemental 

 constituents of the blood. 



In the dropsy which attends the advanced stages of the 

 affection known by the name of Bright's disease of the kid- 



