The phthalein on the day following the second venesection was 45 per cent in two hours.
In venesection the withdrawal of blood may not affect the blood pressure.
If venesection is done before actual convulsions have occurred, the blood pressure falls temporarily but rapidly rises again.
When the blood pressure is suddenly excessively high from any cause, venesection may be life saving, and should perhaps be more frequently done than it is.
It should be remembered that venesection or profuse bleeding during induced parturition is more valuable than sweating in all eclamptic cases and in all nephritic convulsions.
With the patient eclamptic and stupid, whatever the date of the pregnancy, Hirst would do venesection immediately in amount from 16 to 24 ounces, depending on what amount seems advisable.
When venesection is not indicated in certain conditions of low blood pressure and heart failure, ergot has saved life.
The reckless way in which venesection was resorted to, led to its disuse, until to-day it has so vanished from medical practice that even its benefits are overlooked, and depletion is brought about in some other manner.
I have not witnessed any bad effects of venesection attributable to puncture of the tendon or fascia, or to partial division of twigs of the cutaneous nerves.
Illustration] Venesection is usually practised on either the basilic or the cephalic vein, or else on the median basilic or the median cephalic.
This disease generally follows an accidental wound or operation, as venesection or amputation; it is also of frequent occurrence after the application of a ligature to the extremity of a vein.
No treatment is of any avail; venesectionhastens the sinking.
One objection to venesection is, that after frequent and copious venous hemorrhage, the internal vessels become gorged with blood, and a disposition to apoplexy is induced.
Venesection is not so universally and unnecessarily resorted to as formerly, and is performed by better instructed practitioners.
But venesection is absolutely required in many cases, and must often be the principal dependence of the surgeon for removing or preventing evil consequences.
Venesection can be employed only in strong plethoric patients, in the very first stage of strangulation, and before the patient is exhausted by the distressing symptoms.
In respect to the general treatment, it was uniformly antiphlogistic, consisting of the abstraction of blood by venesection and leeching, and the use of purgatives, proportioned to the urgency of the inflammatory symptoms.
The success believed at one time to follow the practice of venesection was only apparent.
With the debilitated and aged, venesection must be avoided.
It seems very evident that prior to the above period medical practitioners were in the habit of resorting to venesection to an unwise extent, and in cases which the progress of modern pathology has shown it to be wholly inapplicable.
This fact was early established by American physicians who observed the disease, and the opportunities for doing so were not wanting, since venesection was used by every one who treated it.
Venesection was probably employed as a part of a routine treatment which neither sound reason nor clinical experience justified.
In the epidemic studied by Mannkopff (1866) he found that blood obtained by venesection gave a clot with a thick buffy coat.
There is but little confidence to-day in the methods byvenesection and purgation, upon which at one time reliance was placed.
Venesection to fainting, with or without mercury, mitigated the symptoms, but seemed to hasten paralysis and death.
Between the periods of antimony and calomel popularity venesection was the favorite remedy of physicians.
This, of course, was an exceptional case at the very height of the venesection furor, but it helps us to realize how convinced physicians were of the curative power of the practice.
How beneficent has venesection seemed, though it is now frankly confessed that it has but a narrow usefulness for a very circumscribed set of ills!
Venesection itself in nine out of ten cases probably did more physical harm than good, but all the good came from its suggestion.
The book of his by which he is known is a volume of directions for venesection from the standpoint of the anatomist.
He wrote concerning the manner of dining and supping, (De Prandio et Coena), a commentary on Mondino's anatomy and a book On Venesection and another On Dosage.
When the inflammatory process is of a higher grade and not likely to yield to purely medicinal treatment, leeching or venesection may be employed, but should not be resorted to without urgent reason.
He discarded venesection entirely, was among the first to recognize the value of ipecacuanha, and objected strenuously to opium until the cause of the evil was expelled.
Venesection from the arm, the jugular vein, or from vessels elsewhere is no longer much in vogue, it being doubtful whether general venesection is more useful than local bleedings.
Formerly, venesection was employed to prevent the occurrence of hemorrhage, but its efficacy in this direction is at least doubtful, and cannot but help to intensify the disastrous consequences of severe and protracted attacks.
The use of calomel subsequently, the theory underlying venesection and a great many of our modern surgical fads for the improvement of man's condition by taking something out of him have the same notion for basis.
He recommended treatment by water, by venesectionand by hellebore.
The operation continued just as frequent all through the Roman period, and the writings on venesection are very voluminous.
Although venesection is one of the most frequently mentioned operations, and although the phlebotome is one of the most frequently named instruments, we have no passage giving even the most meagre description of this instrument.
Venesection was succeeded by large doses of calomel, and the calomel era continued on almost to our own generation.
Venesection may be required to relieve cerebral congestion or distention of the right heart and pulmonary circulation.
Colin strongly advises venesection to relieve the distention of the heart.
For the most part, he says, an ill result follows venesection in smallpox; and although it sometimes succeeds, yet that is more by chance than by good management.
In no case has a cutting operation more severe than a superficial venesection been allowed to be performed without anaesthetics.
Generally, venesectionwas regarded as an equivalent to a reduction of food, since according to ancient physiological theory, food was converted to blood.
Erasistratus was led to question how excessivevenesection differed from committing murder.
Pneumonia and pleurisy were the primary diseases for which venesection was an approved remedy.
Numbers indicate locations where in certain diseasesvenesection should be undertaken.
He noted that venesection declined more than any other medical opinion in the esteem of the physician and the public during the previous half century.
In 1539, the celebrated anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, continued the controversy with his famous Venesection Letter, which came to the support of Brissot.
Venesection could be extremely dangerous if not correctly administered, but in the hands of a good physician, venesection was regarded by Galen as a more accurate treatment than drugs.
Galen suggested that instead of starvation, which required some time and evacuated the system with much discomfort to the patient, venesection should be substituted to remove the blood directly.
Bowditch, tried in 1872 to arouse support for venesection among his Massachusetts Medical Society colleagues.
Patient is about to undergo venesection in the arm.
The doctor did not think well of the change at the time, but, speaking generally, he says Venesection had had its turn, and has now given place to other treatment.
He believed the practice of Venesection commenced to be general about the year 1811, for his father was a medical practitioner before him, and he does not remember his (the father's) telling him that he practised it before that time.
In the rheumatic form, laxatives followed by diaphoretics, the warm bath, and even venesection will be necessary.
The blood in venesection has an oily appearance, and displays small particles like sand.
A hard swelling, about half as large as an egg, appeared at the wrist, and one of the orifices made by venesection was black and painful.
When the difficulty of respiration is great, venesection is immediately necessary, and then an emetic, and a blister.
In this delirium, if the pulse will bear it, venesection should be used, and three or four grains of calomel, with fomentation of the head with warm water for an hour together every three or four hours.
Inflammation of the lungs is also liable to occur in the measles, and must be attacked by venesection at any time of the disease; otherwise either a present death, or an incurable consumption, is the consequence.
Venesection to six or eight ounces, ten grains of calomel, and an infusion of senna with salts and oil, every three hours, till stools are procured.
In this case large quantities of the bark will frequently cure the disease, and especially if preceded by venesection and a brisk cathartic; but if the offending tooth can be detected, the most certain cure is its extraction.
If the pain be great, venesection by leeches on the temple, or cutting the temporal artery, and one purge with three or four grains of calomel should be premised.
Thus, for instance, Stoeffler taught: {the sun prohibits venesection two {days before and one day after.
Then the various ages of life had also different days for venesection; days, for instance, which promised to be exceptionally successful for venesection in the young, offered very unfavorable prospects to the aged.
Venesection here acts upon the proper condition of the body in general.
Venesection here also renders memory more acute, as well as the activity of the brain in general.
To facilitate this difficult art to a certain degree special figures were designed--so-called venesection manikins, in which the numerous points for bleeding were most carefully annotated.
The chances for venesection became rather intricate in their different aspects.
Melancholia; venesection in this locality strengthens the kidneys.
Apart from remarks which referred to all occurrences of civil life, was stated the exact period when to have the hair cut, when venesection was to be performed, when to draw teeth, when to take a bath, etc.
In the first instance, where the disease is not seen early, the treatment must sometimes be limited to those means which promote the absorption of the water, and neither venesection nor leeches will be required.
On this seems to have been founded the successful practice of Sydenham, who used venesection and a cathartic in chlorosis before the exhibition of the bark, steel, and opiates.
In diseases attended with violent pain, opium has double the effect, if venesection and a cathartic have been previously used.
The periods of the pleurisy recur with exacerbation of the pain and fever about sun-set, at which time venesection is of most service.
Venesection was the main part of what was then called the antiphlogistic treatment.
On one or two occasions in his own lifetime Morgagni fell ill and venesection was recommended.
It was the custom to practise venesection very freely.
