An ignorance of the quantity of blood which has been drawn by design, or lost by accident, has contributed very much to encourage prejudices against blood-letting. Mr. Cline drew 320 ounces of blood in 20 days from a patient in St. Thomas's hospital, who laboured under a contusion of the head. But this quantity is small compared with the quantity lost by a number of persons, whose cases are recorded by Dr. Haller[57]. I shall mention a few of them. One person lost 9 pounds of blood, a second 12, a third 18, and a fourth 22, from the nose, at one time. A fifth lost 12 pounds by vomiting in one night, and a sixth 22 from the lungs. A gentleman at Angola lost between 3 and 4 pounds daily from his nose. To cure it, he was bled 97 times in one year. A young woman was bled 1020 times in 19 years, to cure her of plethora which disposed her to hysteria. Another young woman lost 125 ounces of blood, by a natural hæmorrhage, every month. To cure it, she was bled every day, and every other day, for 14 months. In none of these instances, was death the consequence of these great evacuations of blood. On the contrary, all the persons alluded to, recovered. Many similar instances of the safety, and even benefit of profuse discharges of blood, by nature and art, might be mentioned from other authors. I shall insert only one more, which shall be taken from Dr. Sydenham's account of the cure of the plague. "Among the other calamities of the civil war which afflicted this nation, the plague also raged in several places, and was brought by accident from another place to Dunstar Castle, in Somersetshire, where some of the soldiers dying suddenly, with an eruption of spots, it likewise seized several others. It happened at that time that a surgeon, who had travelled much in foreign parts, was in the service there, and applied to the governor for leave to assist his fellow-soldiers who were afflicted with this dreadful disease, in the best manner he was able; which being granted, he took so large a quantity of blood from every one at the beginning of the disease, and before any swelling was perceived, that they were ready to faint, and drop down, for he bled them all standing, and in the open air, and had no vessel to measure the blood, which falling on the ground, the quantity each person lost could not, of course, be known. The operation being over, he ordered them to lie in their tents; and though he gave no kind of remedy after bleeding, yet of the numbers that were thus treated, not a single person died. I had this relation from Colonel Francis Windham, a gentleman of great honour and veracity, and at this time governor of the castle[58]." [57] Elementa Physiologiæ, vol. iv. p. 45. [58] Vol. i. p. 131.