“Before this disease, he was not observed to be of a lumpish dull
spirit, his memory was happy enough, and he seem’d chearful and
nimble enough in body; but since the violence of his fever, his
writ seem’d wholly sunk, his memory perfectly lost, and his body so
heavy and drowsie that he was not fit for any thing. I beheld him
fall asleep as he sate at dinner, as he was eating his Breakfast,
and in all occurrences where men seem most unlikely to sleep. If he
went to bed at nine of the clock in the Evening, he needed to be
wakened several times before he could be got to rise by nine the next
morning, and pass’d the rest of the day in an incredible stupidity.
“I attributed all these changes to the great evacuations of blood,
the Physitians had been oblig’d to make for saving his life, and I
perswaded myself that the little they had left him was extreamly
incrustated [? incrassated] by the ardour of the fever....
Accordingly my conjecture was confirmed by our opening one of his
Veins, for we beheld a blood so black and thick issue forth, that it
could hardly form itself into a thread to fall into the porringer.
We took about three ounces at five of the Clock in the morning, and
at the same time we brought a Lamb, whose Carotis Artery we had
prepar’d, out of which we immitted into the young man’s Vein, about
three times as much of its Arterial blood as he had emitted into the
Dish, and then having stopt the orifice of the Vein with a little
bolster, as is usual in other phlebotomies, we caus’d him to lie down
on his Bed, expecting the event; and as I askt him now and then how
he found himself, he told me that during the operation he had felt a
very great heat along his Arm, and since perceiv’d himself much eased
of a pain in his side, which he had gotten the evening before by
falling down a pair of staires of ten steps; about ten of the clock
he was minded to rise, and being I observed him cheerful enough, I
did not oppose it; and for the rest of the day, he spent it with much
more liveliness than ordinary; eat his Meals very well, and shewed a
clear and smiling countenance.... He grows fat visibly, and in brief,
is a subject of amazement to all those that know him, and dwell with
him.”
This boy had been transfused for therapeutic purposes; the second
transfusion performed by Denys was done upon an older man “having
no considerable indisposition,” and was purely experimental. About
twenty ounces of lamb’s blood are stated to have been transfused,
but the procedure was without any ill effect, and it may be doubted
whether the man received as much as this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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