244 ON THE EARLY STAGES OF INFLAMMATION 
of its particles to a degree which overcomes a counteracting agency on the 
part of the tissues. 
Further inquiry will, in all probability, throw clearer light upon this subject, 
but in the meantime the facts already known furnish to the unaided senses 
indisputable proof of the fundamental principle to which we were led by micro- 
scopical observation, viz. that the tissues through which the blood flows have, 
when healthy, special relations to the vital fluid, by virtue of which it is main- 
tained in a fit state for transmission through the vessels. Further, the differ- 
ences of adhesiveness in the corpuscles according as the blood is surrounded 
by healthy tissues or ordinary matter, can now be no longer matter of surprise, 
knowing as we do the alterations which take place in the chemical condition 
of the liquor sanguinis in consequence of such changes of circumstances, and 
also the great effect produced upon the adhesiveness of the red discs in blood 
outside the body by slight variations in the quality of the plasma.’ 
The freedom from attraction for the fibrine, if not the actual repulsion of 
it, on the part of the walls of healthy blood-vessels, seems to explain the well- 
known fact in pathology, that when healthy capillaries are subjected to abnormal 
pressure in consequence of venous obstruction, the fluid squeezed through their 
parietes consists almost exclusively of serum; the fibrine being apparently 
excluded from their pores as liquid mercury is from those of flannel, or any other 
texture composed of a material destitute of attraction for it. 
From the speedy coagulation of lymph effused into the interstices of in- 
flamed organs or upon inflamed serous surfaces, compared with the length of 
time that blood has been known to remain fluid after being poured out into 
such situations in a state of health, and also from the deposition of fibrine 
which occurs at an early period upon the lining membrane of the vessels in 
arteritis or phlebitis, whether in the limited inflammation which results from 
the application of a ligature, or in the more extensive affection which is apt 
to occur spontaneously, it would appear that the liquor sanguinis, like the 
corpuscles, tends to comport itself near inflamed tissues as if in the vicinity of 
ordinary solid substances. It is true that coagulation is not observed to occur 
in the vessels of the frog’s web after the application of irritants; but this is 
accounted for by the length of time required for the occurrence of the process 
within the vessels, the liquor sanguinis passing on into healthy regions, leaving 
the adhesive corpuscles behind it. Adhesiveness of corpuscles may, however, 
come on in circumstances which admit of permanent fluidity of the blood. 
Thus if a cat be killed without haemorrhage, and one of the jugular veins be 
exposed and tied in two places, and the animal be then suspended by the head 
+ see Section I, p. 214. 
