ON SECRETION AND EXCRETION 193 



varied character, in the economy of vital integration 

 and disintegration, and employs an array of organic 

 structures, and devices, of the most elaborate, and 

 cunning design, whose influence in securing the health, 

 and physiological working, of the whole organism, it is 

 impossible to overestimate. It is concerned in, and at, 

 every stage of alimentation, nutrition and excretion, 

 assisting in the performance of every physiological stage 

 of the materio-vital work of the economy, selecting, and 

 passing on, the elements of nutrition and separating 

 and eliminating the elements of decay, thus maintaining 

 the balance in equal poise of tissue integration and 

 disintegration. 



Every cell wall and nuclear sac thus becomes, to 

 all intents and purposes, a gland, whose function it is, 

 by osmosis, to convey, or pass through it, the currency 

 of nutritive plasma and the used up elements of its 

 contained structures. On the balance, therefore, of 

 their individual and communal functional performances, 

 depends the condition of the body, as to the incidence 

 of health, and disease, and the amount both of physical, 

 and mental comfort and happiness enjoyed by the 

 individual being. 



Secretion, as a physiological function, must, therefore, 

 be followed by circulatory disposal and utilisation and 

 by structural integration of the secreted fluid, or its 

 excretion, and it must be continually borne in mind 

 that rectification of this regime, when faulty, becomes 

 the first duty of the members of the healing art ; its 

 close study and appreciation must, consequently, be 

 regarded as one of the foundation qualifying duties of 

 each and all of them if they are scientifically to apply 

 the principles of therapeutics, and surgery. 



Excretion, as a physiological term and process, has a 

 much more restricted meaning than secretion, being 

 applicable only to the final acts of material circulatory 

 disposal, in the economy of nutrition, and embraces the 

 eliminatory functional acts of the bowel, kidneys, skin 

 and lungs. 



Excretion is concerned entirely with the disposal of 

 the egesta, and its scope, when healthy, entirely accords 



