the expletive method has found many
antagonists of weight: Simon, Williams, Tweedie, Allison and others have
shown the danger of a general and indiscriminate use of it. Williams,[7]
in his comparison of the epidemics of scarlatina from 1763 to 1834, has
come to the conclusion that the possibility of a cure in cases of
blood-letting, compared with the cases where the patients have not been
bled, is like 1:4; i. e. four patients have died after blood-letting,
when only one died without bleeding. "Experience has equally shown, says
Dr. Allison, that the expectation entertained by Dr. Armstrong[8] and
others, that by early depletion the congestive or malignant form of the
disease may be made to assume the more healthy form of inflammation and
fever, is hardly ever realized; and in many cases, although the pulse
has been full and the eruption florid in the beginning, _blood-letting
(even local blood-letting) has been followed by a rapid change of the
fever to a typhoid type, and manifestly aggravated the danger_."--My own
experience would prompt me to declare myself against blood-letting in
general, even if I had not a sufficient quantity of water at hand to
manage the violent or irregular reaction of a case. Blood-letting, in
any case of eruptive fever, and with few exceptions in almost every
other case, appears to me like pulling down the house to extinguish the
fire. A little experience in hydriatics, a few buckets of water, with a
couple of linen sheets and blankets, will answer all the indications and
remove the danger without sending the patient from Scylla into
Charybdis.

35. THE ANTI-GASTRIC METHOD,

consisting in the free use of emetics or purgatives, has been
recommended by some eminent practitioners. Withering,[9] Tissot, Kennedy
and others are in favor of the former, and find fault with the latter,
whilst Hamilton,[10] Willard, Abernethy, Gregory, &c., prefer
purgatives, and some, of course, look upon calomel as the anchor of
safety, which they recommend in quantities of from five to ten grains
per hour.[11] The friends of one part of the anti-gastric method make
war upon the other: Withering finding purgatives entirely out of place
and Sandwith, Fothergill and others having seen nothing but harm done by
them, whilst Wendt,[12] Berndt,[13] Heyfelder and others caution their
readers against emetics. The anti-gastric method has been of some
service in epidemics and individual cases, when the character of the