TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 137 



In concluding this brief recapitulation of the 

 views contained in my former paper, it only remains 

 for me to add, that as the relative facilities afforded 

 for the passage of the blood through the minute 

 vessels of different organs and structures must 

 necessarily vary with the anatomical arrangement 

 of those vessels, so will the activity, and even the 

 nature, of these functions which are connected with 

 the amount of lateral pressure of the blood-currents 

 be in the same proportion affected. In a secreting 

 structure, where effusion is continually occurring, 

 the internal pressure will preponderate in the inter- 

 mediate vessels as completely as in the minute di- 

 verging ones : while in a vascular arrangement, like 

 that of the lung, it appears to me very certain that 

 the cylindrical vessels possess an absorbing power 

 not inferior to that of the adjacent veins. It is also, 

 from the same reasoning, evident that a vessel which, 

 in a healthy state, absorbs, will, on the application 

 of an obstruction to the blood's passage through it, 

 lose that power, and -take on the opposite action- 

 effusion. The same portion of capillary tube may, 

 therefore, at different times, and under opposite con- 

 ditions, be an absorbing and an effusing vessel. 



