350 ON DIGESTION AND NUTRITIVE ABSORPTION. 



sphere. A case of ovarian dropsy has been recorded, in which it was observed 

 that the patient, during eighteen days, drank 692 oz. or 43 pints of fluid, and 

 that she discharged by urine and by paracentesis 1298 oz. or 91 pints, which 

 leaves a balance of 606 oz. or 38 pints to be similarly accounted for.* The 

 following remarkable fact is mentioned by Dr. Watson in his Chemical Essays. 

 " A lad at Newmarket having been almost starved, in order that he might be 

 reduced to a proper weight "for riding a match, was weighed at 9 A. M., and 

 again at 10 A. M.; and he was found to have gained nearly 30 oz. in weight 

 in the course of this hour, though he had only drunk half a glass of wine in 

 the interim. A parallel instance was related to the Author by the late Sir G. 

 Hill, then Governor of St. Vincent. A jockey had been for some time in 

 training for a race in which that gentleman was much interested, and had been 

 reduced to the proper weight. On the morning of the trial, being much 

 oppressed with thirst, he took one cup of tea ; and shortly afterwards his 

 weight was found to have increased ft Ibs.; so that he was incapacitated for 

 riding. Nearly the whole of the increase in the former case, and at least 

 three-fourths of it in the latter, must be attributed to cutaneous absorption ; 

 which function was probably stimulated by the wine that was taken in the one 

 case, and by the tea in the other. 



466. Not only water, but substances dissolved in it, may be thus introduced. 

 It has been found that after bathing in infusions of madder, rhubarb, and tur- 

 meric, the urine was tinged with these substances ; and that a garlic plaster 

 affected the breath, when every care was taken, by breathing through a tube 

 connected with the exterior of the apartment, that the odour should not be 

 received into the lungs.t Gallic acid has been found in the urine, after the 

 external application of a decoction of a bark containing it ; and the soothing 

 influence, in cases of neuralgic pain, of the external application of cherry- 

 laurel water, is well known. Many saline substances are absorbed by the 

 skin, when applied to it in solution ; and it is interesting to remark that, con- 

 trary to what happens in regard to the absorption of these from the alimentary 

 canal, they are for the most part more readily discoverable in the absorbents 

 than in the veins. This is probably due to the fact, that the imbibition of 

 them is governed entirely by physical laws ; in obedience to which, they pass 

 most readily into the vessels which present the thinnest walls and the largest 

 surface. In the intestines, the vascular plexus on each villus is far more 

 extensive than the ramifying lacteal which originates in it ; and as the walls 

 of the veins are thin, there is considerable facility for the entrance of saline 

 . and other substances into the general current of the circulation ; but in the 

 skin, the lymphatics are distributed much more minutely and extensively than 

 the veins; and soluble matters, therefore, enter them in preference to the 

 veins. The absorbent power of the Lymphatics of the Skin is well shown by 

 the following experiment. A bandage having been tied by Schreger round 

 the hind-leg of a Puppy, the limb was kept for twenty-four hours in tepid 

 milk ; at the expiration of this period, the lymphatics were found full of milk, 

 whilst the veins contained none. In repeating this experiment upon a young 

 man, no milk could be detected in blood drawn from a vein. It has been 

 shown by Miiller that when the posterior extremities of a Frog were kept for 

 two hours in a solution of prussiate of potass, the salt had freely penetrated 

 the lymphatics, but had not entered the veins. It does not follow, however, 

 from these and similar experiments, that in all tissues the lymphatics absorb 

 more readily than the veins; for as the capillary blood-vessels in the lungs 

 are much more freely exposed to the surface of the air-cells than are the 

 lymphatics, we should, on the principles just now stated, expect the former to 



* Madden, loc. cit. f Dunglison's Physiology, vol. L p. 644. 



