es a material
called pus: at the same time a less degree of inflammation produces new
vessels called vulgarly proud flesh; which, if no bandage confines its
growth, nor any other circumstance promotes absorption in the wound, would
rise to a great height above the usual size of the part.

Hence the art of healing ulcers consists in producing a tendency to
absorption in the wound greater than the deposition. Thus when an
ill-conditioned ulcer separates a copious and thin discharge, by the use of
any stimulus, as of salts of lead, or mercury, or copper externally
applied, the discharge becomes diminished in quantity, and becomes thicker,
as the thinner parts are first absorbed.

But nothing so much contributes to increase the absorption in a wound as
covering the whole limb above the sore with a bandage, which should be
spread with some plaster, as with emplastrum de minio, to prevent it from
slipping. By this artificial tightness of the skin, the arterial pulsations
act with double their usual power in promoting the ascending current of the
fluid in the valvular lymphatics.

Internally the absorption from ulcers should be promoted first by
evacuation, then by opium, bark, mercury, steel.

3. Where the inflammation proceeds with greater violence or rapidity, that
is, when by the painful sensation a more inordinate activity of the organ
is produced, and by this great activity an additional quantity of painful
sensation follows in an increasing ratio, till the whole of the sensorial
power, or spirit of animation, in the part becomes exhausted, a
mortification ensues, as in a carbuncle, in inflammations of the bowels, in
the extremities of old people, or in the limbs of those who are brought
near a fire after having been much benumbed with cold. And from hence it
appears, why weak people are more subject to mortification than strong
ones, and why in weak persons less pain will produce mortification, namely,
because the sensorial power is sooner exhausted by any excess of activity.
I remember seeing a gentleman who had the preceding day travelled two
stages in a chaise with what he termed a bearable pain in his bowels; which
when I saw him had ceased rather suddenly, and without a passage through
him; his pulse was then weak, though not very quick; but as nothing which
he swallowed would continue in his stomach many minutes, I concluded that
the bowel was mortified; he died on the next day. It is usual for patients
sinking