558 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



a condition which necessarily affects ultimately the vitality 

 and health of the area involved in the occurrence, and 

 also, necessarily, the neighbouring areas so far as their 

 histological continuity and functional relationships deter- 

 mine. The same doctrine holds good whether we regard 

 circulation in its uni-cellular, multi-cellular, or organically 

 and viscerally grouped aspects, and points to the absolute 

 necessity of, at all times, discovering its locale , and secur- 

 ing the patency of the channels beyond, or ahead, of the 

 site of stasis or regurgitation, and thus of providing a 

 way of normal progress for the circulating materials, 

 whether they be nutrient or effete, so as to allow of the 

 effects of the temporarily evolved morbid incidents to be 

 effectually dealt with by the vis medicatrix nature. 



When this has taken place, and all the circulatory media 

 being, or having become, unexceptionable, we shall be pre- 

 pared to see, so far as circulation can determine, a condi- 

 tion of perfect functional work, but where irremovable 

 error has crept in to mar that perfection, we may, likewise, 

 be prepared to find that that error is to be found, very 

 often, wherever linkage of these circulatory media takes 

 place, or at the points of alteration of lumina of channels,, 

 or altered physical consistence and physiological condition 

 of circulating material ; such, for instance, as may be found, 

 where the alimentary materials are taken up by the gastro- 

 intestinal mucosa, where the chyliferous vessels pass through 

 their associated glands, in the capillary areas of the lungs,, 

 and peripheral capillary blood vasculature, the incipient 

 lymphatic vasculature, where its lumen is valved, or passes 

 through glands, as well as at all those points where the 

 various great excretory agencies converge and eliminate 

 the residual products of sympathetic nervine activity and 

 vitality. Besides the foregoing, and very specially in the 

 systemic nervature at its source in the neuroglia of brain, 

 cord, and ganglia, at its points of axonal fibre interruption 

 or junction, and at its peripheral terminations, sensory and 

 motor, or where linkage of its neural elements is effected 

 with the skin and muscles, it displays a like liability to 

 circulatory stasis, and a consequent tendency to patho- 

 logical change and morbid genesis. 



As a line of principle for enabling us to trace the 



