Bleeding is materially assisted in reducing the activity of the circulation, by the employment of saline purgatives, along with nauseating doses of antimony. Diaphoretics are of essential service in promoting the action of the exhalants, and thereby relieving the affected capillaries. The exhibition of opium is frequently advantageous, more especially after depletion, in allaying the painful sensations when severe, and averting reaction, and also in procuring refreshing sleep, when the patient is anxious and restless. Digitalis has been administered, with the view of reducing the arterial action; but it has been fully established, that this medicine acts at first as a direct stimulant, and that it is only after its use has been continued for some time that its effects become sedative. The local applications to an inflamed part are sometimes made hot, sometimes cold. The latter will perhaps be at first the more grateful to the sensations of the patient. They are, however, with greater propriety employed before inflammatory action is fairly established, and they act by constringing the superficial vessels with which those more deeply seated sympathise to a certain extent; but warm fomentations are more pleasant and useful when inflammation has really taken place; they relieve the pain more effectually, and at the same time promote the cutaneous transpiration; they relax the surface moreover, effusion is thus encouraged, the deeper vessels are so far relieved of their load, and the pressure upon, and stimulation of, the nerves are thus diminished. After the violence of the symptoms has abated somewhat, the vessels still, however, being loaded with blood, the inflammation in fact having become chronic, stimulants may with propriety be applied directly to the affected parts; these are employed, perhaps, with greatest advantage immediately after the bloodvessels are unloaded by leeching, scarification, or punctures; this practice is borne out by the result of experiment and observation. It is seen, that after the vessels have become dilated, and the blood has stagnated in them through the infliction of injury, or the application of some stimulating substance, that the employment of another and different stimulus immediately causes the contraction of the capillaries, and the renewal of active circulation. During an inflammatory attack, the patient should be allowed very little food, and what he does receive must contain little nutriment in proportion to its bulk. But in many cases it is unnecessary to enjoin such abstinence, as the patient has no appetite, and refuses food. In inflammation of deeply-seated parts, such as the apparatus of some articulations, it is a frequent mode of assisting the completion of resolution to excite inflammatory action in an external, and consequently less vital and important part. This is accomplished by the application of stimuli, caustics, cautery, setons, &c.