or other evacuations, the vital forces are at the same time diminished, the secretions disturbed, and various disorders produced[116].” The manner in which M. SENAC speaks of bleeding gives it yet more precisely the exclusion in this case. “If (says he) the thick or red globules of the blood be deficient, bleeding is useless or rather pernicious: it ought then to be forbidden in extenuated bodies, where the blood is in small quantity, or not of due consistence, as when there comes from the vessels but a liquid that can scarce color linnen or water[117].” It has been observed, that such is the state of the blood in those who have hurt themselves by self-pollution; and such it is generally in the weak and in valetudinarians. Let those who attempt the cure, in this case, by bleeding, compare that method with this precept founded on the most enlightened theory, and on numerous practical observations, well digested by reflection; these constitute the basis of the work from which I draw it, and then let them judge of the success they ought to expect. Those medicines which evacuate the first passages, conduce to the restoration of strength, when, in those parts, there is formed a lodgment of matters so considerable by their mass, as to cramp or obstruct the functions of all the _viscera_, or when there are in the stomach, or in the first intestines, putrid matters, of which the common effect is a prodigious weakness. In those cases evacuatives may be prescribed, if nothing contra-indicates them, if there are no other means of freeing the first passages, or if there should be any danger in not evacuating them quickly enough. These three conditions have rarely place in persons who are in a state of consumption, and in whom the weakness and atony of the first passages is a counter-indication, ever present, to purgatives or emetics. There is oftenest another method of procuring a successive evacuation, which is, the employing the non-astringent tonics; such are a great number of bitters, which, by restoring play to the organs, produce the double good effect of digesting what is not indigestible, and of evacuating the superfluities. In short, there is rarely any danger in not evacuating them quickly enough. This danger, indeed, sometimes exists in acute diseases; the acridity of the matters which the heat augments, and the prodigious re-action of the fibres, may occasion violent symptoms, which are never seen in chronical disorders or distempers of languor, in which the evacuatives, properly so called, are, from that very quality, never, by much, so necessary, and are, as I have before observed, often contra-indicated. Atony, and the want of action, are the cause of those gatherings when there are any formed; when they are evacuated by a purgative, the effect is dissipated, but the cause which will have produced them is considerably augmented: there remain to be repaired both the evil that actually exists, and that which the