These few distinctions of the pulse we will let suffice, as they, when properly attended to, will in all cases enable us to make a true distinction between health and the different stages of sickness, and accordingly direct us to a true method of cure. ------------------------------------------- SECT. II. _Of the Effects of Bleeding_ There is, perhaps, not a greater remedy in medicine than bleeding; but good and effectual as it is, yet I will venture to say, there is none more pernicious than this, if injudiciously applied. As I value the life of my fellow creatures, I would at all times caution them against the injudicious application of this operation, being persuaded, that more have lost their lives by the lancet, than by the sword, and pestilence itself. Not to be tedious on this important subject, I shall give here some very few rules, whereby a patient may be judged in a proper state for bleeding; and likewise, where that operation ought to be avoided: for all the service we can possibly hope and receive from bleeding, is to lessen the quantity of blood, by which the whole body becomes relaxed, consequently less liable to the inflammatory irritation, that a too great quantity of blood might occasion; but on the contrary, if the solids are but weak, and the blood poor, we only augment the evil by bleeding, which we would wish to remove, as thereby the system becomes weakened, and not able to disengage itself from the obnoxiousness it is incumbered with; and thus proves the very destruction it was intended to remedy. The notion of drawing off the bad blood by bleeding, is very erroneous and absurd; the whole is too intimately mixed, and will ever generate the same again till the disease is removed. _Bleeding is requisite_ 1st. When a strong robust person, of a full and sanguine complexion, by accident receives a heavy contusion; a broken limb; or wound, whereby the parts become inflamed; a fever like to ensue; and that the pulse becomes hard and full, the veins distended, &c. &c. 2dly. When such a person receives a great shock, fall, terror, or any other strong emotion of the mind; whereby the blood becomes rarefied, or threatens a fever. 3dly. In the beginning of pleurisy, peripneumony, sudden and violent fevers, great colds, &c. as also scalding, burning, apoplexies, convulsions, palpitations, suffocations, and all such dangerous violent disorders; in these cases only bleeding is useful, and then it ought to be performed immediately, and with great moderation: six or eight ounces is enough from the strongest man; if requisite, it may be easily repeated, but if overdone, it is not so easily replenished. _Bleeding in general is hurtful_ 1st. In agues, notwithstanding the violent paroxysm of the hot fit, because the solids are here too much relaxed.