207 



In the summer of the year 1801, I amputated the arm of an old man oi' 

 sixty, on account of a corroding- and varicose ulcer, which for thirty 

 years had occupied a part of the fore arm, and extended lo the elbow. 

 All who were present at this operation, observed that the blood which 

 flowed from the arteries, was not nearly so red as that from, the arteries 

 of a young man, whose thigh had just been taken off, on account of a 

 scrophulous caries of the leg; that the venous blood was entirely dis- 

 solved, purple, and similar to a weak dye of logwood. This blood did 

 not coagulate, like that of the young man, it became fluid, and was con- 

 verted into a serum containing a few colourless clots. 



Those who have endeavoured to find, in the changes undergone by 

 the blood and the other fluids, the cause of all diseases, have fallen into 

 us serious blunders as the determined solidists, who maintain that all 

 diseases arise from a deranged condition of the solids, and that every 

 change in the condition of the fluids is a consequence of that derange- 

 ment. The believers in the Immoral pathology, have certainly gone too 

 far ; they have admitted that the animal fluids might be acid^ alkalescent, 

 acrimonious, while we have no proof whatever that they ever do under- 

 go such changes. The solidists have, likewise, gone much beyond the 

 truth, in saying, that every primitive change in the condition of the fluids 

 is imaginary, and that the doctrine of humoral pathology is without foun- 

 dation. Stahl relates* that the blood of a young woman, who was bled 

 during a fit of epilepsy, was absolutely coagulated, as if that fluid had 

 partaken in the rigidity affecting the muscular organs. Some authors say 

 they have met with the same appearance;! have, however, never been 

 able to discover any sensible difference between the blood of an epilep- 

 tic patient and of any other person of the same constitution, of the same 

 age, and living on the same regimen ; and it should be considered, that to 

 make a just comparison of our fluids, it is necessary that every thing 

 should be alike in the persons from whom they are taken, with the ex- 

 ception of the difference of which we are to judge. In fact, the blood 

 has not the same appearance, and does not coagulate, in the same manner, 

 when taken from a child, a woman, or an old man; from a man who lives 

 abstemiously, or from one who lives on a full dietf. 



After enumerating the changes which the blood undergoes, one might 

 speak of those which affect the fluids that are formed from it, one might 

 attend to the greenish, leek colour, and sometimes even darkish appear- 

 ance of the bile, which is not always of the same degree of bitterness ; 

 the liquid state of the urine, which is voided colourless, without smell or 

 flavour, after a fright, or during ihe convulsive fits of hysterical women ; 

 the foetid smell and the viscidity of the saliva, when the salivary glands 

 are under mercurial influence ; the milky state of the serum which lubri- 

 cates the parietes of the abdomen and of the viscera which it contains, 

 after inflammation of the peritoneum $ changes which almost universally 



* Theoria medica vera, page 678. 



t As to the humoral pathology, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot 

 help regarding it as unnecessary and unphilosophica'. Allowing all that may be asked, 

 in consequence of the latest experiments, we remain persuaded that the changes pro- 

 duced in the blood are secondary to previous alterations in the blood-making organs. 

 Hence we prescribe for the digestive system, without reference to the " humours," sure 

 that " vitiated fluids" will not long trouble us after we have excited the nervous sys- 

 tem to a proper degree. Gedman, 



