ary becomes ruptured,
and effuses the blood into the cellular membrane round the inert
termination of the vein. This is generally esteemed a sign of the putrid
state of the blood, or that state contrary to the inflammatory one. As it
attends some inflammatory diseases which are attended with great
inirritability, as in the confluent small pox. But it also attends the
scurvy, where no fever exists, and it therefore simply announces the
inactivity of the terminations of some veins; and is thence indeed a bad
symptom in fevers, as a mark of approaching inactivity of the whole
sanguiferous system, or death. The blue colour of some children's arms or
faces in very cold weather is owing in like manner to the torpor of the
absorbent terminations of the veins, whence the blood is accumulated in
them, and sometimes bursts them.

* * * * *

ORDO II.

_Decreased Irritation._

GENUS II.

_Decreased Action of the Secerning System._

These are always attended with decrease of partial, or of general heat; for
as the heat of animal bodies is the consequence of their various
secretions, and is perpetually passing away into the ambient air, or other
bodies in contact with them; when these secretions become diminished, or
cease, the heat of the part or of the whole is soon diminished, or ceases
along with them.

SPECIES.

1. _Frigus febrile._ Febrile coldness. There is reason to believe, that the
beginning of many fever-fits originates in the quiescence of some part of
the absorbent system, especially where they have been owing to external
cold; but that, where the coldness of the body is not owing to a diminution
of external heat, it arises from the inaction of some part of the secerning
system. Hence some parts of the body are hot whilst other parts are cold;
which I suppose gave occasion to error in Martyn's Experiments; where he
says, that the body is as hot in the cold paroxysms of fevers as at other
times.

After the sensorial power has been much diminished by great preceding
activity of the system, as by long continued external heat, or violent
exercise, a sudden exposure to much cold produces a torpor both greater in
degree and over a greater portion of the system, by subtracting their
accustomed stimulus from parts already much deprived of their irritability.
Dr. Franklin in a letter to M. Duberge, the French translator of his works,
mentions an instance of four young men, who bathed in