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SECT. XXXII. 



OF THE SECRETIONS IN GENERAL. 



4G6. BESIDES the nutritious fluids, others of various 

 descriptions are produced from the blood by means of 

 secretion, which Haller, no less than his predecessors, 

 with truth and regret declared to be among the most 

 obscure parts of physiology.* 



467. The secreted fluids differ, on the one hand, so 

 considerably among themselves, and, on the other, have 

 so many points of resemblance, that their classification 

 cannot but be extremely arbitrary. If we arrange them 

 according to the degree of difference between them and 

 the blood from which they are formed, they will stand 

 in the following order. 



First, the milk, which may be in some degree consi- 

 dered as chyle reproduced, and appears formed by the 

 most simple process from the blood newly supplied 

 with chyle. 



Next, the aqueous fluids, as they are commonly deno- 

 minated from their limpid tenuity, although the greater 

 part differ importantly from water in the nature of their 

 constituents, and especially in the proportion of albu- 

 men : such are the humours of the eye, the tears, in all 

 probability the vapour contained in the cellular inter- 

 stices and the cavities of the abdomen and thorax ; 



* v. Fouquet on Secretion, in the Encyclopedical Dictionary of Paris. T. xiv. 

 Fr. L. Kreysig, De secretionibiis. Spec. i. ii. Lips. 1794 sq. 4to. 



