Note 4 — LIFE IN A TUB.1

How many lives have been sacrificed by the practice of bleeding in feverish and inflammatory cases, from the non-adoption of wet-sheet packing, which causes no loss of strength, and leaves behind none of the debility and consequent long convalesence, which bleeding and strong medicines necessarily occasion. It is to us, indeed, inexplicable how so insane a process as bleeding can still be resorted to in this enlightened 19th century, a process which deprives nature of her vital fluid, and lets flow the stream on which our very existence depends.4 How can this tapping of the springs of life be defended when an expedient for lowering inflammation without reducing the strength, presents itself for adoption by the physician, one which by its action purifies the blood, reducing fever by the abstraction of heat, and by the removal of the serum or watery constituent of the blood, which contains all its impurities. Will the public, then, place confidence in the physician who, when invited to cure them, would weaken them by bleeding, and assist the operations of nature by depriving her of that vital fluid, on the existence of which her powers of self-restoration depend? Will they prefer a system which ensures a long convalesence to the patient, to that in which he recovers from his disease without any sensible diminution of his strength, or injury to his constitution? In short, the operation of wet-sheet packing is so extraordinary and satisfactory in its results, that he who refuses to make use of it must lag behind, whilst success will attend the efforts of him who judiciously applies it in the cases to which it is suited.