Succinct practical observations on the effects of bloodletting : containing an investigation of the practice of general and local abstraction of blood ; also how far leeches may be efficacious, independently of the evacuation they produce : to which are added ob[s]ervations on visceral inflammation after parturition / by Edward Geoghegan.

Date:: 1833

Credit: Succinct practical observations on the effects of bloodletting : containing an investigation of the practice of general and local abstraction of blood ; also how far leeches may be efficacious, independently of the evacuation they produce : to which are added ob[s]ervations on visceral inflammation after parturition / by Edward Geoghegan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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]0 culations of ingenious Physiologists, and settling on points essential to practice, and easily under- stood, I would take the division of inflammatory action with vigor and the like state with debility. Aiming at the standard of health, reason and ex- perience point to copious evacuations of blood, to abate too great power in the former, a practice that is contraindicated on principle in the latter, where there is deficient power, the symptoms in both are nearly the same. Burns, cauteries of every kind, occasion extreme pain, and symptoms ofinflammation ; but the great feature that admits of loss of blood, namely, tonic power is absent, acrid contents of the viscera im- part pain to contiguous and to remote parts by communication, consent and sympathy ; nay, grief often causes pain. In all these there is no inflam- matory action, and if the latter followed, it would be the effect of nervous irritation, remediable through the nerves, not by the removal of blood which might be deficient; determination to the part would cease with the irritation that occassioned it. Pain in the head and in all the cavities, proceeds very generally from the stomach, the great medium of sympathetic communication throughout the entire body. This point, is illustrated by drunkenness which exhibits every symptom of increased determination, quick- ened arterial action, inflammation, feverishness, and madness, congestion, &c. all apparently indicating the necessity of large bleedings, and particularly from

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