"If you should ask a modern Sangrado what was most necessary in the treatment of disease, doubtless he would reply, 'Bleeding.'
"Our modern pathologists, surgeons and others, think bleeding the factotum in all maladies; it is the ne plus ultra, when drawn in large quantities. Blood-letting, say these authors, is not only the most powerful and important, but the most generally used, of all our remedies. Scarcely a case of acute, or, indeed, of chronic, disease occurs in which it does not become necessary to consider the propriety of having recourse to the lancet." (??) To what extent blood-letting is carried, in our modern age, may be learned by reading Youatt and others, who recommend it "when animals rub themselves, and the hair falls off; when the eyes appear dull and languid, red or inflamed; in all inflammatory complaints, as of the brain, lungs, kidneys, bowels, womb, bladder, and joints; in all bruises, hurts, wounds, and all other accidents; in cold, catarrh, paralysis, and locked-jaw." Yet, strange to say, one of these authors qualifies his recommendations as follows: "No man, however wise, can tell exactly how much blood ought to be taken in a given case." Now, it is well known that the draining of blood from a vein, though it diminishes the vital resistance, and lessens the volume of fluids, does not mend the matter; for it thus gives to cold and atmospheric agents the ascendant influence. A collapse takes place, the secretions become impaired, the animal refuses its food, "looks dumpish," &c.
We might continue this article to an indefinite length; but as we shall, in the following pages, have occasion to refer to the use of the lancet as a destructive agent, we conclude it with the following remarks of an English physician: "Our most valuable remedies against inflammation are but ill adapted for curing that state of disease. They do not act directly on the diseased part; the action is only indirect; therefore it is imperfect. Bleeding, the best of any of these remedies, is in this predicament."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A piece of pasture land.
[2] Then the life of an animal is also in the blood; and the same evil consequences follow its abstraction.
EFFORTS OF NATURE TO REMOVE DISEASE.
"Nature is ever busy, by the silent operations of her own forces, in curing disease."—Dixon.
Whenever any irritating substance comes in contact with sensitive surfaces, nature, or the vis medicatrix naturæ, goes immediately to work to remove the offending cause: for example, should any substance lodge on the mucous surface, within the nostril, although it be imperceptible, as often happens when the hay is musty, it abounds in particles whose specific gravity enables them to float in atmospheric air; they are then inhaled in the act of respiration, and nature, in order to wash off the offending matter, sends a quantity of fluid to the part. The same process may be observed when a small piece of hay, or other foreign matter, shall have fallen into the eye: the tears then flow in great abundance, to prevent that delicate organ being injured. "When a blister is applied to the surface, it first excites a genial warmth, with inflammation of the skin; and nature, distressed, goes instantly to work, separates the cuticle to form a bag, interposes serum between the nerves and the offensive matter, then prepares another cuticle, that, when the former, with the adhering substance, shall fall off, the nervous papillæ may be again provided with a covering.