Kitap 2
2
If, therefore, the patient be full of blood, and have large veins, in every form of rejection we must open a vein; whether it proceed from rupture, or erosion, venesection is very suitable; and even, if from rarefaction, there is danger, lest the fulness of blood burst forth.It is to be understood that by rarefaction our author means exhalation; that is to say, increased action of the exhalants. And we are to open the hollow vein at the elbow (for the blood flows readily from it, and it is easily opened, and the orifice can be safely kept open for several days). In a word, then, in all the diseases of all the vital organs, this is the outlet of the blood. For the one higher up and this are both branches of the humeral, so that the one above can have no more remedial power than the mesal. They are ignorant of these divisions who have connected the upper vein with the stomach and liver. But if the flow proceed from the spleen, they direct us to open the vein of the left hand, which runs between the little finger and the one next the middle; for certain physicians held it to terminate in the spleen; but it is a branch of the vein below those at the elbow. Why, then, should we rather open the vein at the fingers than the one at the elbow? for there it is larger, and the blood flows readily from it. Altogether, then, we are to stop before coming to deliquium animi. Yet neither, also, is much blood to be abstracted; for the hemorrhage itself is calculated to enfeeble the patient; but, after abstracting a small quantity, repeat the bleeding the same day, the next, and the day following. But if the patient be thin, and scantily supplied with blood, we must not open a vein. So much respecting the abstraction of blood.
