[767] Ambrose Paré expresses very strongly the difficulty of forming a correct prognosis in injuries of the head: “Ex quo intelligere licet, multos ab exiguis vulneribus mortem oppetere, alios ex ingentibus et penitus magnis desperatisque convalescere.” (Opera, ix., 9.)
[768] Injuries of the Head, p. 148.
[769] Aphor. v., 68.
[770] See the Argument to the treatise, On Regimen in Acute Diseases.
[771] Opera, ix., 10.
[772] Sir Astley Cooper mentions an instance in which 208 ounces of blood were abstracted from a patient!! In Quesnay’s Memoir there is nothing more common than to find it reported that he had bled a patient three or four times in the course of a day. In one case 160 ounces were taken in nine days; “but,” it is gravely added, “two years elapsed before she was quite well again.”
[773] IV., 5, 3, 1.
[774] The principles upon which depletion by bleeding and purging should be regulated are fully stated and discussed by Galen, in the Fourth Book of his great work on Therapeutics. The rule is briefly given by Hippocrates in his Second Aphorism: “respect being paid to place, season, age, and the disease in which it is proper or not.”
[775] See Aphor. v., 18, 22; and § 12 of this treatise. The professional authorities of the present day are not agreed as to the expediency of using poultices or cold lotions in injuries of the scalp. Guthrie and Hennen recommend the latter; but South, in the edition of Chelius, prefers the former.
[776] This is related of Philagrius in a very interesting scholium on the Aphorism just quoted. See Scholia in Hippocrat. et Galen., tom. ii., p. 457; ed. Dietz.