But any other part of the venous system may become quiescent or totally paralytic as well as the veins of the intestines:  all which occur more frequently in those who have diseased livers, than in any others.  Hence troublesome bleedings of the nose, or from the lungs with a weak pulse; hence haemorrhages from the kidneys, too great menstruation; and hence the oozing of blood from every part of the body, and the petechiae in those fevers, which are termed putrid, and which is erroneously ascribed to the thinness of the blood:  for the blood in inflammatory diseases is equally fluid before it coagulates in the cold air.

Is not that hereditary consumption, which occurs chiefly in dark-eyed people about the age of twenty, and commences with slight pulmonary haemorrhages without fever, a disease of this kind?—­These haemorrhages frequently begin during sleep, when the irritability of the lungs is not sufficient in these patients to carry on the circulation without the assistance of volition; for in our waking hours, the motions of the lungs are in part voluntary, especially if any difficulty of breathing renders the efforts of volition necessary.  See Class I. 2. 1. 3. and Class III. 2. 1. 12.  Another species of pulmonary consumption which seems more certainly of scrophulous origin is described in the next Section, No. 2.

I have seen two cases of women, of about forty years of age, both of whom were seized with quick weak pulse, with difficult respiration, and who spit up by coughing much viscid mucus mixed with dark coloured blood.  They had both large vibices on their limbs, and petechiae; in one the feet were in danger of mortification, in the other the legs were oedematous.  To relieve the difficult respiration, about six ounces of blood were taken from one of them, which to my surprise was sizy, like inflamed blood:  they had both palpitations or unequal pulsations of the heart.  They continued four or five weeks with pale and bloated countenances, and did not cease spitting phlegm mixed with black blood, and the pulse seldom slower than 130 or 135 in a minute.  This blood, from its dark colour, and from the many vibices and petechiae, seems to have been venous blood; the quickness of the pulse, and the irregularity of the motion of the heart, are to be ascribed to debility of that part of the system; as the extravasation of blood originated from the defect of venous absorption.  The approximation of these two cases to sea-scurvy is peculiar, and may allow them to be called scorbutus pulmonalis.  Had these been younger subjects, and the paralysis of the veins had only affected the lungs, it is probable the disease would have been a pulmonary consumption.