ON THERAPEUTICS. 
311 
already overcharged ; under such circumstances, the tempta¬ 
tion is strong to have recourse to those measures which 
promise a direct and immediate relief, nor can any objection 
be urged against this course upon an emergency, but, as a 
general system, the employment of nervous sedatives is more 
satisfactory ultimately, when there exists no necessity for a 
sudden production of the sedative action. 
Bloodletting is the most direct method of diminishing the 
activity of the organic functions to any required extent, 
according to the amount of circulating fluid removed. When 
the art of medicine lacked its present refinement, bloodletting 
stood high in estimation as a remedy for every form of disease 
associated with excess of function or structure : like all popular 
remedies it has been terribly abused, and, by a necessary 
reaction, has come to be looked upon by modern science as a 
relic of empiricism, a rude method of attaining an end that 
may be reached in other though commonly more circuitous 
routes. Not to have had recourse to the lancet for so long a 
time amounts to a special merit in some persons 5 ideas, and a 
boast to the effect is no unfrequent occurrence during a 
medical discussion, an individual urging the fact under an 
apparent conviction that his self-denial deserves commenda¬ 
tion. 
In spite of all that has been said and written upon the 
question, a consideration of the pro's and con’s may not be 
out of place. 
The sedative effects of bleeding undoubtedly depend, at 
first, upon the decrease in the bulk of the mass of blood in 
circulation; a certain quantity of fluid is necessary to furnish 
a stimulus to the heart and vessels, and the sudden decrease in 
the amount, therefore, leads to a temporary interruption in the 
circulation, or in the event of the abstraction being continued 
beyond a certain point, to a cessation of the heart’s contrac¬ 
tion, and death by syncope. The high nutritive value of the 
fluid can hardly be taken into calculation, in estimating the 
immediate effects, as no time is afforded for an action through 
the medium of the nutritive functions, nor is it necessary to 
follow this line of argument, as the occurrence of similar 
phenomena from excessive perspiration, and the actively re¬ 
storative action of a quantity of fluids, under such circum¬ 
stances, sufficiently show that the loss of bulk is the principal 
if not the only cause of the sudden depression ; the nervous 
svstem will of course instantlv suffer from the withdrawal of 
its natural stimulus. 
However decided the effects of venesection, they are gene¬ 
rally evanescent; in a short time absorption of fluid from 
