Mortification is accompanied with great anxiety; coldness and clamminess of the face and extremities; weak, irregular, and hurried circulation; quick, short breathing; a cadaverous expression of countenance; hiccup (which, however, often occurs in very slight sloughing, or when no sloughing has taken place, in external or internal inflammations, extravasations, &c.); by diarrhœa, vomiting, and in hopeless cases, more especially of traumatic gangrene, by delirium and coma; in fact, almost all the symptoms of severe constitutional irritation are more or less fully developed. In some cases, the patients are restless and unmanageable; in others, low and dejected. The disease often proceeds with fearful rapidity to a fatal termination, the patient becoming comatose from effusion within the cranium; but in other instances, in which the vigour of the constitution is greater, and the extent of mischief less, the system bears up under the affection, and a separation is effected between the dead and living parts. The danger is in general to be estimated by a consideration of the size and importance of the part, and of the age and constitution. The destructive consequences of sphacelus arise both from a local and general cause; for the mere application of putrid animal substance to a part still alive—the infiltration, for instance, of dark serosity into the cellular tissue in the course of a limb—causes a sort of inflammation attended with symptoms of diminished power, and followed by constitutional disturbance; whilst the ultimate extinction of life may be imputed to the effect produced on the system by the part previously to its becoming sphacelated, and to the sympathy between the system and the parts which are left in a weak and moribund condition, and which seem endowed with a disposition to extend the disease. In the _treatment_ of mortification, no one would think of using any means, local or general, so long as the cause remained; and it therefore must in the first place be removed, otherwise the mischief may speedily become irreparable; thus, a stricture must be divided, irritating fluids evacuated, foreign bodies extracted, &c.