388 INVOLUNTARY DISCHARGES OF BLOOD.

error ; they put off the operation too long. When it is certainlyknown that there is a stone in the bladder, and that it is too largeto get along the urethra, no time ought to be lost in having it cutout, before the patient's habit becomes too irritable, or the stoneis so far increased in size, that it cannot be extracted without alaceration of the parts.*

CHAP. XXV.

INVOLUNTARY DISCHARGES OF BLOOD.

( Hcemorrhagice.)

Spontaneous or involuntary discharges of blood often happenfrom various parts of the body.. These, however, are so far frombeing always dangerous, that tkey often prove salutary. Whensuch discharges are critical, which is frequently the case in fevers,they ought not to be stopped. Nor, indeed, is it proper, at any-time, to stop them, unless they be so great as to endanger thepatient's life. Most people, afraid of the smallest discharge ofblood from any part of the body, fly immediately to the use ofstyptic and astringent medicines, by which means an inflammationof the brain, or some other fatal disease, is occasioned, which, hadthe discharge been allowed to go on, might have been prevented.

Periodica] discharges of blood, from whatever part of the bodythey proceed, must not be stopped. They are always the effortsof Nature to relieve herself; and fatal diseases have often been theconsequence of obstructing them. It may, indeed, be sometimesnecessary to check the violence of such discharges ; but even thisrequires the greatest caution. Instances might be given where thestopping of a small periodical flux of blood from one of the fingershas proved fatal to the health.

In the early period of life, bleeding at the nose is very common.Those who are farther advanced in years are more liable to hte-moptoe, or discharge of blood from the lungs. After the middleperiod of life, {Hemorrhoidal fluxes are most common, and, in thedecline of life, discharges of blood from the urinary passages.

Involuntary fluxes of blood may proceed from very different, andoften from quite opposite causes. Sometimes they are owing to aparticular construction of the body, as a sanguine temperament,laxity of the vessels, plethoric habit, &c. At other times theyproceed from a determination of the blood towards one particularpart, as the head, the hemorrhoidal veins, «fee. They may likewiseproceed from an inflammatory disposition of the blood, in whichcase there is generally some degree of fever: this likewise happenswhen the flux is occasioned by an obstructed perspiration, or astricture upon the skin, the bowels, or auy particular part of thesystem.

But a dissolved state of the blood will likewise occasion heemor-

* A tea-spoonful of p'ire magnésie taker, t'-vo or three times a-day has of late beendiscovered to be a most effectual preventive of the gravel and stone, and is of servicewhere alkali« fail to relieve the increased secretijn of uric a^id, aitd to prevent it«fonn:nj calculi in t kidneys-, it aUo agrees better with the stomach.

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