LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 49 



" disperse" applied by persons to the disappearance 

 of tumors. Patients often ask their medical atten- 

 dant whether he wishes any tumor they may happen 

 to have (an enlarged gland, for instance), to break, or 

 to be dispersed. The proper term is absorbed; and 

 when a tumor, by means of friction, or voluntarily, 

 disappears, it is because it has been sucked up by the 

 absorbents, and carried into the blood of the veins. 

 As an absorbent passes onward from its origin 

 towards its termination, it every now and then 

 stops, recoils upon itself, and rolls itself up into an 

 irregularly-shaped ball (varying in size from that 

 of a millet-seed to that of a hazel-nut), and then pro- 

 ceeds as before. While the absorbent is in the act 

 of forming this ball, it is excessively minute, even 

 beyond the reach of the most powerful miscroscope. 

 These balls are exceedingly numerous in the me- 

 sentery that part which, in a lamb, is called " the 

 fry" : they are generally to be found in the neigh- 

 bourhood of large blood-vessels, under the lower 

 jaw, before and behind the ear, at the bendings of 

 the knee and thigh, and in the armpit. These little 

 balls are the absorbent glands ; and there is scarcely 

 an instance of an absorbent vessel reaching its ter- 

 mination in the veins without having first formed 

 one or more of these glands. 



