Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/373

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BLOODY SWEAT.
359

through them, and is made a bloody sweat); while Lucan thus describes it:

". . . Sic omnia membra
Emisere simul rutilum pro sanguine virus.
Sanguis erant lacrymae; quacumque foramina novit
Humor, ab bis largus raanat cruor; ora redundant,
Et patulae nares; sudor rubet; omnia plenis
Membra flaunt venis; totum est pro vulnere corpus."

(Thus all the limbs together emitted a red humor the same as blood. The tears were blood; and whatever openings the humor knew, from them flows copious bleeding; the mouth and the distended nostrils overflow; the sweat is red; the veins flow full in all the limbs; the whole body is as if it were a wound.)

The detestable Charles IX of France sank under this disorder, thus described by Mezeray ("Histoire de France," vol. iii, p. 306): "La nature fit d'étranges efforts pendant les deux dernières semaines de la vie de la roi. II s'agitait et se remuait sans cesse; le sang lui rejailliait par les pores et partout les conduits de son corps. Après avoir long-temps suffert, il tomba dans une extreme faibleur et rendit l'âme." (Nature made strange efforts during the last two weeks of the life of the king. He was in constant agitation and motion; the blood gushed out from his pores and from all the conduits of his body. After having suffered a long time, he fell into an extreme weakness and gave up his soul.) The same historian relates the case of the governor of a town taken by storm, who was condemned to die, and was seized with a profuse sweating of blood the moment he beheld the scaffold. Lombard mentions a general who was affected in a similar manner on losing a battle. The same writer tells us of "a nun who was so terrified when falling into the hands of ruthless banditti that blood oozed from every pore." (Schenck, apparently referring to the same case, says that she died of the hæmorrhage, in the sight of her assailants.)

Henry ab Heer records the case of a man who not only labored under bloody sweat, but small worms also accompanied the bloody secretion. These were undoubtedly vermicular or worm-like coagula, or clots, formed in the sweat-ducts.

In the memoirs of the Society of Arts of Haarlem we read of the case of a sailor, who, falling down during a storm, was raised from the deck streaming with blood. At first it was supposed that he had been wounded, but on close examination the blood was found to flow from the surface of the body.

Fabricius de Hilden mentions a case that came under the observation of his friend Sporlinus, a physician of Bale: the patient was a child twelve years of age, who never drank anything but water; having gone out into the fields to bring home his father's flocks, he stopped upon the road, and, contrary to habit, drank freely of white wine. He shortly after was seized with fever. His gums first began to