20. Bleeding has been charged with being a weakening remedy. I grant that it is so, and in this, its merit chiefly consists. The excessive morbid action of the blood-vessels must be subdued in part, in a fever, before stimulating remedies can be given with safety or advantage. Now this is usually attempted by depleting medicines, to be mentioned hereafter, or it is left to time and nature, all of which are frequently either deficient, or excessive in their operations; whereas bleeding, by suddenly reducing the morbid action of the blood-vessels to a wished-for point of debility, saves a great and unnecessary waste of excitability, and thus prepares the body for the exhibition of such cordial remedies as are proper to remove the debility which predisposed to the fever. 21. It has been said that bleeding renders the habitual use of it necessary to health and life. This objection to blood-letting is founded upon an ignorance of the difference between the healthy, and morbid action of the blood-vessels. Where blood is drawn in health, such a relaxation is induced in the blood-vessels, as to favour the formation of plethora, which may require habitual bleeding to remove it; but where blood is drawn only in the inflammatory state of fever, the blood-vessels are reduced from a morbid degree of strength to that which is natural, in which state no predisposition to plethora is created, and no foundation laid for periodical blood-letting. But there are cases which require even this evil, to prevent a greater. Thus we cure a strangulated hernia, when no fever attends, by the most profuse bleeding. The plethora and predisposition to disease which follow it are trifling, compared with preventing certain and sudden death. 22. Bleeding has been accused of bringing on an intermitting fever. This is so far from being an objection to it, that it should be considered as a new argument in its favour; for when it produces that state of fever, it converts a latent, and perhaps a dangerous disease, into one that is obvious to the senses, and under the dominion of medicine. Nor is it an objection to blood-letting, that, when used in an inflammatory intermittent, it sometimes changes it into a continual fever. An instance of the good effects of this change occurred in the Pennsylvania hospital, in an obstinate tertian, in the year 1804. The continual fever, which followed the loss of blood, was cured in a few days, and by the most simple remedies.