... Theses de pleuritide

XLIV.
Indeed, if it is certain that blood has fallen from the upper parts and excited the pleurisy, and provides it with fomentation, we shall without doubt more safely cut the vein that looks directly to the affected part than that of the opposite side. We judge the same to be done where the pleurisy has drawn its origin from the lower parts. For if the vein of the opposite side is cut, the disease will not be removed, but the noxious humor will either be left in the inflamed part, with pure blood being drawn out, or it will be transferred elsewhere from that part.

XLV.
But if in great fullness, blood flows most copiously from parts situated below the liver, or if hemorrhoids are obstructed or menses suppressed, and it is carried into the pleura, the opening of the vein of the ham or the ankle has its place. Although, when obstruction does not press as in the upper fluxions, so in this case also, a larger section of that vein which is inserted into the affected side can be administered without any danger. For a more abundant bloodletting is generally most salutary for almost all pleuritic patients.

XLVI.
Most certain experience also prescribes this method, besides the authorities of Hippocrates and Galen and the moments of reasoning. Hippocrates indeed, in pleurisy, orders the inner vein of the arm to be cut on the side that is affected. Galen, in the same way, with the right side of the flank taken, opens the inner vein of the right elbow, and if this does not appear, he resorts to the median, and if this itself does not offer itself to our sight, he proceeds to the humeral rather than to the inner vein of the left elbow.

XLVII.
Reasoning then persuades us of the same thing. For whether blood flows from the upper parts or the lower, the vein cut which is directly from the affected side revulses, derives, and evacuates, and performs all those things that the goals of drawing out blood show must be attempted; while on the contrary, the vein of the opposite arm, with Galen as our authority, brings no utility, or one that is entirely obscure and after a long interval. He also testifies that blood from the foot, when cut, moves suppressed menses. Moreover, experience supports these so manifestly that certain most illustrious physicians do not hesitate to affirm that they alone have restored all pleuritic patients (who were not, however, in an extremely desperate state) offered to them by this one way of curing.