"What treatment," says Cruveilhier, "shall we oppose to purulent infection? To this question experience is as yet dumb, while theory would seem to point to diffusible stimuli and tonics; to ammonia, quinine, and sudorifics; to hot external applications, to the vapour baths, to purgatives, and especially to emetics; to tartarized antimony, in large doses; to vesicatories, and to strong diuretics. Calomel has been extensively employed, to create a fluxion from the intestinal mucous membrane; but all these means have failed as signally in my hands as in those of others; yet, when the injection of putrid matters into the veins of living animals has been followed by abundant and very fetid evacuations, they have usually got well. It is a fundamental fact of pathology, that the intestinal canal is chiefly affected in diseases caused by miasmata. I am certain that diseases resulting from purulent infection would not be stamped with the seal of incurability, and that nature, seconded by art, would triumph in the majority of cases, if the pus, which is incessantly renewed, did not incessantly renew the sources of infection. As soon as constitutional symptoms manifest themselves, neither general nor local bleeding affords any advantage. A portion of the _materies morbi_ is, no doubt, abstracted with the blood; but, as it is constantly being reproduced, the constitution is only deprived of the power it would otherwise have of resisting the disease."[43] In accordance with this remark, M. Gaspard found that animals, which recovered after the injection of a certain quantity of pus into their veins, often died when the experiment was repeated. The recovery was usually preceded by black, liquid, and extremely fetid evacuations, which often seemed to afford immediate relief. When such evacuations have taken place in other diseases, the gall-bladder has been found distended with black bile;[44] and it appears probable that the liver, in these cases, is one of the principal organs through which the cleansing of the system is attempted. If the supply of morbid matter to the system could be checked, mercurial action, in this stage of the disease, might be of service, by enabling the liver, or other organs, to throw off their vitiated secretions. When patients recover from purulent deposits (Cases III and XXVII), they are often left in a debilitated and languid state, in which ordinary tonics exercise little influence. The consequences of the disease appear to hang about the system, long after the cause which gave rise to it has ceased. The pulse will sometimes continue irritable, and there will be a tendency to derangement of the secretions of the skin, bowels, and other organs, accompanied by occasional slight attacks of fever. In this condition, an alterative course of mercury, combined with sarsaparilla, has been found beneficial. These remedies, by stimulating the activity of the excreting organs, may assist the constitution in throwing off the