young girl, with her accustomed reserve, made no mention of the fact; but as on successive Fridays the bleeding extended to the feet and hands, concealment became no longer possible. The phenomenon, as it now appears, is thus described by Dr. Lefebvre:-- “If in the course of the week, from Saturday to Thursday morning, an inspection is made of the parts from which blood flows on the Friday, this is what is seen:--On the back of each hand there is a rather oval surface, nearly one inch in length. It is rather more pink in colour, and it is smoother than the neighbouring skin, and does not show a trace of oozing of any kind. On the palm of each hand there is also an oval surface of a light pink colour, corresponding precisely to the stigmatized surface of the back. On the upper aspect of each foot, the impress has the shape of a long square with rounded angles, the square being a little more than an inch long. To conclude, there are on the soles of the feet, as on the palms of the hands, small surfaces of pinkish white colour. “... The first symptoms indicative of the approaching efflux of blood occur on the Thursday, generally about noon. On each of the pink surfaces already described on the hands and feet, a vesicle is seen to commence, and to rise little by little. When completely developed, it is a rounded hemispherical prominence on the surface of the skin; its base is the same size as the pink surface on which it rests--that is, nearly an inch long, by a little more than half an inch broad. This vesicle is formed by the epidermis detached from the dermis, and elevated as a half sphere by serous liquid within.” We again quote some of the medical details:-- “The phenomenon occurs thus:--The vesicle bursts, and the contained serosity escapes. This occurs in different ways--sometimes by a rent lengthways, sometimes by a crucial or a triangular division. In the last case, the rupture of the vesicle suggests the puncture of a leech; but this is a mere resemblance, to prove which it is enough to ascertain the entire absence on the hands and feet of those three-cornered white and indelible scars which always follow leech-bites. But a still more decisive observation is that this triangular rent only divides the epidermis; in fact, if this be removed by rubbing with a cloth, the little wound is no longer seen, and the true skin is found to be quite intact. Directly after the rupture of the vesicle and the escape of the fluid, blood begins to ooze from the bare derma. “The flow of blood always detaches the piece of scarf-skin that makes the vesicle, so that the bleeding surface of the true skin is quite bare; sometimes, however--and especially on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, where the epidermis is very tough--the blood collects, and forms a clot in the partly-torn vesicle.”[56]