Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/758

 738 BLOOD MOSEY BLOODEOOT swells, and should be fixed by two fingers of ' the left hand. Beneath the skin of the neck, and lying upon the jugular vein, there is a muscle as thin as paper, the platysma myoides, the fibres of which run in an oblique direction from the collar bone to the border of the lower jaw, which is the direction of the vein itself; the incision is made at a right angle with re- spect to the direction of these fibres, that they may contract and form no obstacle to the issue of the blood. It is also made rather wide, to insure a free issue from the vein. The blood trickles down, and the card is used to direct it into the vessel of reception. To encourage the flow of blood the patient moves the lower jaw, as in mastication, now and then taking a deep breath. When the bleeding is ended, a bit of adhesive plaster is applied over the orifice, and a pledget placed upon it, which is maintained in place by a ligature wound closely, not tight- ly, round the neck, and fixed with a pin. Bloodletting at the neck is neither difficult nor dangerous, and is performed at times in cases of congestion of blood in the head, as in apo- plexy, asphyxia from hanging, &c. Bloodlet- ting is much less frequently practised now than formerly, and some medical practitioners repu- diate the practice altogether ; but the most eminent physicians, who combine a scientific education with many years of practical expe- rience in the best hospitals of Europe and America, still recognize the necessity of blood- letting in some cases, as a means of producing immediate results of a salutary nature, where the life of the patient would be endangered by delay. Physiology forbids the loss of blood on all occasions of trifling indisposition, especially in feeble constitutions and in city populations, as was formerly of frequent occurrence in medi- cal practice. Both leeching and general bleed- ing are practised now more cautiously than formerly; and cupping, as a substitute for leeching, is practised with the same discretion by well educated physicians. BLOOD MONEY, money paid to the next of kin of a man who met with his death at the hands of another, accidentally or with premedi- tation. It secured the murderer and his rela- tions against retaliation by the relatives of the deceased. The Greeks called it TTOJV^, the Lat- ins pcena, the Franks, Alemanni, and Scandina- vians manbote, wehrgeld, orwyrgilt, the British Celts saarhard, and the Irish Celts eric. The Arabs call it diyeh. The institution still flour- ishes in many communities of Asia and Africa. Among the Arabs the blood money" varies in different parts of the country from 1,000 dir- hems of silver (about $150) to 10,000 ($1,500). The price for a woman is about one third of that for a man, or somewhat more. If pregnant with a male child at the time of the murder, the murderer or his relations pay the full price of a man and woman ; if with a female child, then the full price of two women. In English criminal law the term blood money was also applied to rewards offered by statute to informers against highway rob- bers, thieves, burglars, and utterers of false coin or forged bank notes. Such statutes, however, were found to tempt evil-disposed persons to make a living out of these laws by entrapping unwary and foolish people into the commission of crime, and they have consequent- ly been repealed. BLOOD RAIN, a shower of grayish and red- dish dust mingled with rain, which sometimes falls on vessels off the Atlantic coast of Africa and southern Europe. The dust of these show- ers has been ascertained by Ehrenberg to be largely made up of microscopic organisms, es- pecially the silicious shells of diatoms; in a shower which fell at Lyons in 1846, he esti- mated the total weight at 720,000 Ibs., of which one eighth, or 90,000 Ibs., were these minute organisms. Fig- ures of many of these may be seen in Da- na's "Geology," under " Dynamical Geology." Darwin describes a shower near Cape Verd, which was at least 1,600 miles wide, covering an area of more than 1,000,000 square miles, and extending more than 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa. Lesser show- ers have fallen in Italy, reddish snow at the same time appearing on the Alps. The red color is owing to the presence of a red oxide of iron. One of the earliest of these show- ers is referred to in Homer's Iliad. T lie- origin of the dust is not known ; possibly it is extra-terrestrial. The species, of which over 300 have been made out, are not African ; a few resemble South American. According to Dana, the zone in which these showers occur covers southern Europe and northern Africa, with the adjoining portion of the Atlantic, and corresponding latitudes in western and middle Asia. BLOODROOT, the root of the sanyuinaria Canadensu, called also red-root. This is an herbaceous perennial plant belonging to the poppy family, growing abundantly throughout the United States in rich soils and shady situa- tions, and flowering in March and April. The rootstock or rhizome extends horizontally be- neath the surface a few inches in length, and of the size of the finger. It sends forth side shoots, from the ends of which, as well as from that of the main root, rise the scape and leaf stalks, surrounded by the sheath of the bud, all of which spring up together. The leaf is heart-shaped, but deeply lobed, yellow- ish green on the upper surface, paler on the under, and strongly marked by orange-colored veins. The scape is round and straight, from a few inches to a foot in height, and ter- minated by a single flower of about eight petals, which are white, but sometimes tinged