<98 /Magendie on Absorption. 
mere vital action, and that the absorbing orifices exercise @ 
sort of choice; but it carries with it no degree of improba- 
bility when once absorption is assimilated to a physical op- 
eration. 
These consequences have a relation not only to a healthy 
state of the body; but how many pathological phenomena 
may not be more easily understood and explained by com- 
paring them with the experiments which I have related! 
The cure of the dropsy, of obstructions, and of inflamma- 
tions by bleeding; the evident want of the action of medica- 
ments in violent fevers, when the vascular system is strongly 
tended; the practice of some physicians who purge and 
bleed their patients preparatory to administering active med- 
icines ; the employment of Peruvian bark during the re- 
cess, and for the cure of intermitting fevers; the general 
or partial Edema in cases of organic affections of the heart 
or lungs ; the use of ligatures applied to members that have 
en stung or bitten by venomous animals, to prevent the 
deleterious effects ae Ne SE ND &e. 
ta future have over the manner of treating different affec- 
tion. ppears to me likely that every physician sufficient- 
ly enlightened to relinquish ancient prejudices, will find in 
the single circumstance of the greater or less absorbing pow- 
er of the blood vessels, in proportion as they are more or 
less distended, a fruitful source of curative indications. 
From the above experiments I conclude that the capilla- 
ry attraction of the smaller blood-vessels, appears to be the 
cause, or, more. properly, one of the eauses of what is 
termed venous absorption. 
This conclusion does not, in any manner, interfere with 
the absorption of chyle which is effected in the small intes- 
tines by the chylous vessels; an absorption with which I 
shall occupy myself specially hereafter; still less does it in- 
terfere with the absorbing power of the lymphatic vessels ; 
uevertheless, the experiments above described seem to in- 
that I am not mistaken, either in the fact 
elated, or in the consequences I have de- 
