chest, and by compressing the lungs may cause one
kind of asthma, which is relieved by breathing colder air. An increased
quantity of heat by adding stimulus to every part of the system belongs to
the article Incitantia.

III. 1. The application of cold to the skin, which is only another
expression for the diminution of the degree of heat we are accustomed to,
benumbs the cutaneous absorbents into inaction; and by sympathy the urinary
and intestinal absorbents become also quiescent. The secerning vessels
continuing their action somewhat longer, from the warmth of the blood.
Hence the usual secretions are poured into the bladder and intestines, and
no absorption is retaken from them. Hence sprinkling the skin with cold
water increases the quantity of urine, which is pale; and of stool, which
is fluid; these have erroneously been ascribed to increased secretion, or
to obstructed perspiration.

The thin discharge from the nostrils of some people in cold weather is
owing to the torpid state of the absorbent vessels of the membrana
sneideriana, which as above are benumbed sooner than those, which perform
the secretion of the mucus.

The quick anhelation, and palpitation of the heart, of those, who are
immersed in cold water, depends on the quiescence of the external absorbent
vessels and capillaries. Hence the cutaneous circulation is diminished, and
by association an almost universal torpor of the system is induced; thence
the heart becomes incapable to push forwards its blood through all the
inactive capillaries and glands; and as the terminating vessels of the
pulmonary artery suffer a similar inaction by association, the blood is
with difficulty pushed through the lungs.

Some have imagined, that a spasmodic constriction of the smaller vessels
took place, and have thus accounted for their resistance to the force of
the heart. But there seems no necessity to introduce this imaginary spasm;
since those, who are conversant in injecting bodies, find it necessary
first to put them into warm water to take away the stiffness of the cold
dead vessels; which become inflexible like the other muscles of dead
animals, and prevent the injected fluid from passing.

All the same symptoms occur in the cold fits of intermittents; in these the
coldness and paleness of the skin with thirst evince the diminution of
cutaneous absorption; and the dryness of ulcers, and small secretion of
urine, evince the torpor of the secerning system;