prevented.

Miscarriages more frequently happen from eruptive fevers, and from
rheumatic ones, than from other inflammatory diseases. I saw a most violent
pleurisy and hepatitis cured by repeated venesection about a week or ten
days before parturition; yet another lady whom I attended, miscarried at
the end of the chicken pox, with which her children were at the same time
affected. Miscarriages towards the termination of the small pox are very
frequent, yet there have been a few instances of children, who have been
born with the eruption on them. The blood in the small pox will not
inoculate that disease, if taken before the commencement of the secondary
fever; as shewn in Sect. XXXIII. 2. 10. because the contagious matter is
not yet formed, but after it has been oxygenated through the cuticle in the
pustules, it becomes contagious; and if it be then absorbed, as in the
secondary fever, the blood of the mother may become contagious, and infect
the child. The same mode of reasoning is applicable to the chicken pox. See
Class IV. 3. 1. 7.

15. _Scorbutus._ Sea-scurvy is caused by salt diet, the perpetual stimulus
of which debilitates the venous and absorbent systems. Hence the blood is
imperfectly taken up by the veins from the capillaries, whence brown and
black spots appear upon the skin without fever. The limbs become livid and
edematous, and lastly ulcers are produced from deficient absorption. See
Sect. XXXIII. 3. 2. and Class II. 1. 4. 13. For an account of the scurvy of
the lungs, see Sect. XXVII. 2.

M. M. Fresh animal and vegetable food. Infusion of malt. New beer. Sugar.
Wine. Steel. Bark. Sorbentia. Opium?

16. _Vibices._ Extravasations of blood become black from their being
secluded from the air. The extravasation of blood in bruises, or in some
fevers, or after death in some patients, especially in the parts which were
exposed to pressure, is owing to the fine terminations of the veins having
been mechanically compressed so as to prevent their absorbing the blood
from the capillaries, or to their inactivity from disease. The blood when
extravasated undergoes a chemical change before it is sufficiently fluid to
be taken up by the lymphatic absorbents, and in that process changes its
colour to green and then yellow.

17. _Petechiae._ Purple spots. These attend fevers with great venous
inirritability, and are probably formed by the inability of a single
termination of a vein, whence the corresponding capill