strongly upon the capilaries, causes them to uncap and emit blood. It is in vain to administer the elix vitriol, or any other astringent in this case, unless they could affect the capilaries only; but while they increase the cause, as much as they militate against the effect, to say no worse of it, it is useless. But to take off the tension of the vessels, this is oging to the bottom of the cause, and there will be no emission of blood in fever, or peripneumony. There is no doubt but that the attenuation of the blood by rarifaction renders the increased action of the arteries more capable of producing this effect. But there is no emission of blood, simply from attenuation of that fluid. There is always some other cause co-operating, as the increased action of the vascular system, in whole or in part, or some extravasitation of the blood.

Peripneumony.

This inflammation of the lungs, which is local in the first instance, but becomes universal in its ultimate process, and hath its first rise in the general diathesis, should be treated by the electrical shock, as fever in the first instance: That is, the diathesis should be removed in the lower extremities in the first place. The sthenic diathesis being taken off in the lower extremities, by the distenfive dilating effect of the shock, and the perspiration promoted there, will cause the blood to draw off from the chest, and relieve the action of the pulmonory vessels, and give relief in the lungs. This case, as well as the seat of inflammatory rheumatism, demands a delicate treatment; the highly irritated state of the lungs will not bear the most imperceptible elastic spring of the shock; indeed, the least shock is so far perceptible that it apparently wounds the lungs; but there is no necessity of passing the shock through the lungs, until they are so far relieved by removing the general diathesis, by shocks in every other part of the system, that they will begin to receive light shocks freely; and they may be increased in strength from time to time, without any perceptible alteration in the patient's sensation of them: for as the lungs are more and more relieved, the shock will be less and less perceptible in the lungs; which will be one criterion whereby you may judge of the degree of betterment. If the patient's habit is very sanguine, the cure may be facilitated by bleeding: the cure, however, may be absolutely wrought without bleeding in all cases, and it would be an error to take any part of the vital fluids, where there is evidently a penury of fluids, whether it be in pleurify or peripneumony: but as there will be no necessity, since electricity is now understood, of letting blood, merely because there is no alternative, the physician will not now be driven to the extremity of choosing the least of two evils, but will now only let blood when

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