This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 edition. Excerpt: ...of that living fluid, which throughout all the changes of life is constantly maintaining expenditure. This being in the nature of things one of the first effects of disorder, let us beware how we employ a remedy, which, if it succeed not in restoring healthy temperature, must inevitably hasten the fatal catastrophe--or, in default of that, produce those low chronic fevers, which, under the names of dyspepsia, hypochondria, hysteria, mania, &c. the best devised means too often fail to alleviate, far less to cure. With the free admission, then, that the lancet is capable of giving temporary relief to local fulness of blood, and to some of the attendant symptoms, I reject it generally, upon this simple and rational ground, that it cannot prevent such fulness from returning--while it requires no ghost from the grave to tell us that its influence upon the general constitution must, in every such case, be prejudicial. If the source of a man's income is suddenly cut off, and he still continue to spend as before, surely his capital must, as a matter of course, diminish.--Beware then, how, under the exact same circumstances of body, you allow a doctor to take away the little capital of blood you possess when disease comes upon you, --remember there is then no income--all is expenditure. And I care not whether you take inflammation of any considerable internal organ, --the Brain, Liver, or Heart, for example, --or of any external part, such as the knee or ankle-joint--with the lancet, you can seldom ever do more than give a delusive relief, at the expense of the powers of the constitution. The man of routine, who has not heard my previous lectures, giving up Fever, perhaps, and a few other disorders, which the occasional obstinacy of a refractory patient, ...