268 
Use  of  Dry-Powdered  Blood. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharos, 
\    June  1,  1873, 
suffering  from  haemoptysis,  in  whom  tubercles  were  diagnosticated^ 
who  derived  great  benefit  from  that  treatment.  The  quantity  of  blood- 
lost  by  one  of  the  above-mentioned  invalids  was  enormous ;  but  his- 
perseverance  for  two  years  or  more  in  drinking  daily  the  blood,  made 
him  well  and  healthy.  At  this  present  time  he  is  walking  about  Nice,, 
or  attending  to  the  business  of  his  large  establishment. 
I  do  not  wish  to  dwell  upon  the  great  improvement  in  my  own  gen- 
eral health  after  drinking  the  warm  blood  for  about  a  month.  One  of 
the  English  doctors  practising  in  this  place  had  the  opportunity  of 
verifying  my  improvement,  and  the  experiment  which  I  made,  when 
in  a  state  of  general  weakness  and  pallor,  in  consequence  of  suffering 
for  many  years  from  malarial  fever,  taken  during  the  siege  of  Venice 
in  1848  and  1849. 
Every  one  knows  the  history  of  those  barbarians,  who  were  accus- 
tomed to  drink  the  blood  of  their  victims  at  a  feast  after  their  battles 
and  also  of  those  who  were  supported  by  the  blood  of  their  compan- 
ions, wrecked  in  the  Medusa  in  1807 ;  and  of  others  who  have  been 
nourished  in  the  desert  by  the  blood  of  animals. 
Dioscorides  affirms  in  his  De  Medicinali  Materia,  that  animal  blood 
has  been  used  for  the  purpose  of  curing  diseases ;  the  old  women 
adopted  a  similar  system. 
Finding  among  the  English  and  American  patients  in  Nice  an  un- 
conquerable repugnance  to  such  a  remedy,  the  name  only  having  the 
power  of  producing  nausea,  I  was  obliged  to  disuse  it.  But  afterwards 
a  dim  reollection  of  the  manner  in  which  it  was  administered  by  old 
medical  men  in  my  youth,  made  me  adopt  the  plan  of  giving  it  in  the 
form  of  dry  powder. 
History  also  relates  that  dry-powdered  blood  was  used  before  the 
thirteenth  century,  when  the  quack,  Jean  de  Gaddesden,  brought  it. 
into  renown. 
It  is  easy  to  understand  the  comparative  difference  between  the 
warm  and  the  dry  blood.  In  the  first  there  is  life  with  animal  heat,, 
and  volatile  principles,  which  conduce  to  assimilation.  Notwithstand- 
ing, in  the  dry  blood,  fibrin,  albumin,  haematozin,  manganesic,  and 
ferruginous  salts  remain. 
Between  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  celebrated 
anatomist  of  that  day  (F.  Buischio)  found  in  the  blood  the  necessary 
elements  for  the  composition  of  every  tissue  of  our  body.  At  the- 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  also  was  discovered  one  of  the  most 
