Avicenna with his customary accuracy collects everything of importance which had previously been written on the subject, but makes hardly any addition to the ancient stock of information. We can scarcely venture upon an abstract of his important chapter on phlebotomy. We may just mention that as a general rule he approves of bleeding after any accident. He disapproves of bleeding both at the onset and the crisis of a disease. In constitutions requiring bloodletting he holds that spring is the best season for it. Even in cases in which there is a deficiency of blood, but there is congestion in some particular part, he permits blood to be abstracted, in order to produce revulsion, the patient’s strength being recruited afterwards by a nourishing diet. When the colour of the blood is dark, and it is thick in consistence, a larger amount is to be abstracted than when it is thin and of a light colour. He makes the important remark, that bleeding sometimes kindles up a fever. He forbids the bath immediately before the operation, and food or exercise immediately afterwards. When a piece of fat obstructs the flow of blood, he directs that it should be gently pushed aside, but not cut out. (i, 4, 20.) No author, ancient or modern, has described the modes of performing venesection in all parts of the body more accurately than Albucasis. Bleeding from the jugular vein he describes in much the same way that it is now practised by veterinary surgeons, namely, by placing a sort of scalpel, bent at the point, which he calls fossorium, upon the vein, and striking the instrument with a hammer, or some such body. He gives drawings of variously-shaped lancets for opening the veins of the arm. (Chirurg. ii, 97.) The reader is also referred to Haly Abbas for a copious account of the operation, and the circumstances under which it may be performed. It is contra-indicated, he says, when the bowels are loaded with vitiated fæces. He allows it to be performed even after seventy years of age, provided the patient be of a vigorous constitution. (Pract. ix, 2.)