704 ON THE llECKNT EPIZOOTIC AMONG HOUSES. 
poisons, rousing the exhalent vessels to throw out a seriferous fluid 
in order to dilute or destroy the same. This is Nature’s law to 
relieve herself. 
Now, the earliest recognizable symptoms of influenza are a ge¬ 
neral stiffness and soreness, with a serous infiltration over the 
whole surface of the body, but becoming more apparent in the 
extremities, after a few days, from the influence of the law of gra¬ 
vitation. Sometimes, when the superficial exhalents of the body 
have not been acted on, the intestinal exhalents have been the 
means of carrying it off by spontaneous scouring. Now, whether the 
deleterious agent be gaseous, or produced by the infliction of some 
animal agent. Nature in most cases sets up an increased action of the 
serous or mucous membranes if it be a general poison. If a local 
one, there is an infiltration into the surrounding tissue inoculated 
with the virus, the object of which may be either a kind of safe¬ 
guard, by lessening the action of the absorbents, or a means of 
diluting the poison. Dogs in the shooting season are often bitten 
by vipers; and I have always observed, that the sooner the part 
swells, the quicker the dog recovers, from the virus being either 
too much diluted, or the action of the absorbents retarded, and the 
poison decomposed. I have known horses destroyed by being bled 
plentifully after the bite of a viper, the swelling being mistaken 
for an inflammatory action; gangrene having been induced from 
it, when internal stimulants ought to have been resorted to. When 
the bitten part, either in horses or dogs, does not freely infiltrate 
with serum, strong local applications are necessary in order to in¬ 
duce it. It is an important question, as serum is thrown out in 
the infliction of most poisons, whether any agent, by the punctur¬ 
ing of the skin around the part bitten by a rabid dog, would destroy 
the malignancy of the virus. An experiment could be tried, viz., 
that of collecting the poison from the stings of wasps, &c., and 
arming the point of a lancet, and puncturing the part near the bite, 
thus inducing an artificial effusion of a serous fluid. 
I am conscious that I am here digressing from my subject; but 
my object has been to prove that aerial and animal poisons tend to 
seriferous infiltration. When general, they, by means of the cir¬ 
culation, destroy the uniform compounds of the blood, producing an 
excess of serum ; or when local, by a circumscribed injection of the 
same into the surrounding cellular tissue. 
The symptoms of influenza, as it now prevails, are a general 
stiffness and soreness over the surface of the body, quickly fol¬ 
lowed by effusion under the skin, with capillary erection. From 
the second to the third day the legs begin to fill, and the injected 
v(‘ssels of tlie conjunctiva to relieve themselves by serous exuda¬ 
tion. Sometimes, also, the serous fluid of the legs, by rapidly fill- 
