Rhases, with admirable judgment, condenses all the information supplied by preceding authorities, and mixes it up with his own personal observations. He forbids us to give food immediately after bleeding, as the empty veins will absorb the chyle before it is properly digested, which will prove a pabulum of disease. For the same reason, he, like the others, forbids bleeding when the stomach is loaded with crudities, lest they should be absorbed, and carried over the system. In retention of the menses he directs us to open the saphena, or to apply a cupping instrument to the ankle. When the disease is an acute attack of inflammation, he recommends us to abstract blood fully from an opposite part, so as to procure revulsion; but when it is a chronic affection, he advises to take it from the part affected. (Contin. xxviii.) He enjoins, as a prudent precaution in bleeding a person who is intoxicated, to apply two bandages about the arm, and to have proper attendants to restrain the bleeding, which is often difficult to stop in such cases. (Ad Mansor. vii, 21.) The veterinary surgeons practised bleeding freely in the treatment of the diseases of cattle. Vegetius, the great authority on this subject, mentions that many persons bled their cattle every year, in the spring. He adds, however, that the ancient and more prudent authorities disapproved of indiscriminate depletion. (Mulom. i, 22.) SECT. XLI.—ON CUPPING. We must not have recourse to cupping at the commencement of complaints, nor when the body is in a plethoric state, but when the general system has been evacuated, and when there is no defluxion any longer to the part, and especially when there is a necessity of removing, dislodging, and determining something outwardly. Dry cupping then dissipates flatulence, stops defluxions to the stomach, attracts blood to a part, and stops it again, when determined to a part, if applied to the opposite parts; and it also occasions a translation from the deep-seated parts to the surface, and on the whole produces a metastasis of the fluids, and an evacuation of the spirits. But cupping with scarifications facilitates the evacuation of the offending causes, which it manifestly brings from the deep-seated parts; for it produces the discharge not only of blood but of the other humours, and especially if applied with much heat. And if we wish to make the abstraction from parts that are fleshy, we must first scarify and then apply the cupping instrument; but if the part is not fleshy, we must first have recourse to dry cupping, and when the parts becomes swelled up, we scarify and apply the cupping instrument again. If we wish to make but a small evacuation we must be satisfied with one incision, but if we wish much we must make several. And if we apprehend that the contained blood is of a thinner consistence we will make superficial scarifications, but if of a thicker, deep-seated. When we wish to evacuate coagulated blood, occasioned by a blow, we must be