LYMPHATIC SYSTEM. 167 



place in the living body, because on opening a dead one we 

 see all the neighbourhood of the gall-bladder tinged with this 

 fluid. 1 



Such are the arguments brought in favour of transudation; 

 but, on a careful examination, they are not so satisfactory as 

 those which may be produced in defence of the opinion that 

 these secretions are by organized passages, as I think will ap- 

 pear from the following observations : 



First. Although fluids do transude on being injected into 

 the vessels of the dead body, yet we must not thence conclude 

 that a similar effect would certainly take place in the living ; 

 for it is probable that " our fibres and vessels have a degree of 

 tension which they may lose with life." Besides, if transuda- 

 tion took place in the living body, it would seem to defeat the 

 principal purpose for which the blood-vessels were made, that 

 is, the containing and conveying the fluids ; and upon drink- 

 ing a greater quantity than ordinary of watery liquors, instead 

 of the liquors being carried to the kidneys or other emuncto- 

 ries, and thereby thrown out of the body as a redundancy, 

 they would escape into the cellular membrane, and occasion an 

 anasarca. That this would be the case will appear the more 

 probable, when it is considered how small the fibres of our 

 blood-vessels must be, and therefore what millions of pores (did 

 they exist) the water would be exposed to from its entrance 

 into the stomach, and its passage through the lacteals, the 

 thoracic duct, the veins, the heart, the lungs, and the arteries, 

 before it reached the kidneys. So that were we in imagina- 

 tion to follow a drop of these liquors, according to the idea of 

 transudation, we should find it first leaking through the sto- 

 mach or through a lacteal, then being absorbed, then escaping 

 a second time, and being again absorbed, &c., an idea by no 

 means consistent with what we know of the works of nature, 

 who, as a learned and ingenious author says of, her, "Operam 

 suam non ludit, neque quod actum est agit denuo." 3 It is 

 more probable, therefore, that as the blood-vessels are made to 

 contain and convey the fluids, nature has taken care to con- 

 struct them properly to prevent this purpose being defeated. 



Secondly. To suppose that the fluids which moisten the 



1 See Dr. Hunter's Medical Commentaries, part i, p. 40. 



2 Dr. Glisson, 



