CHAPTER IX. 



AN EXAMINATION OF THE OPINION WHETHER THE COMMON VEINS 

 DO THE OFFICE OF ABSORPTION. 



As there is a secretion upon the different -surfaces, and into 

 the different cavities of the body for the purposes of the con- 

 stitution, so there is likewise an inhalation or an absorption. 

 For example, if food be taken into the stomach and intestines, 

 it is there digested, and being converted into chyle, it is in 

 that form taken into the blood-vessels. If garlic be applied to 

 the skin it gets into the body, and is smelt in the breath with 

 as much certainty as when taken into the stomach, where its 

 juices are absorbed by the lacteals. So likewise terebinthinate 

 medicines applied to the skin are soon smelt in the urine, 

 and cantharides in a blister affect the urinary passages. 



In the same manner fluids are taken from different cavities 

 of the body into the vascular system. Thus the water of an 

 ascites and an anasarca are occasionally taken up and carried 

 by the blood-vessels to the intestines and kidneys, and evacuated 

 by stool or by urine. And the pus of an abscess is sometimes 

 absorbed, and carried to distant parts of the body and there 

 deposited, or is evacuated by the intestines or urinary passages. 

 So also fluids injected into cavities, as that of the chest or the 

 belly of living animals, soon find their way into the blood- 

 vessels (LXXIX). These circumstances are admitted by anato- 

 mists amongst the unquestionable facts of physiology. 



(LXXIX.) It is curious with what rapidity water is absorbed when 

 injected either into serous sacs or into the subcutaneous filamentous 

 tissue. In February 1839, I opened the tunica vaginalis testis in three 

 dogs, and through it injected one pint of water into the peritoneum of 

 the first dog ; two pints into the second ; and three pints into the third. 

 The water in each case was well secured in the belly by a ligature on the 

 neck of the tunica vagiualis. The temperature of the air was 56 and of 

 the water 54. In each trial, all the water had disappeared forty-nine 

 hours after the injection ; and the peritoneum had no marks of innamma- 



