ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 49 



the process of excretion can finally deal with them, or to 

 where the process of haemogenesis can make them avail- 

 able for farther organic purposes. 



As we have said, water is everywhere present, in greater 

 or lesser proportion, throughout every tissue and organ in 

 the body, and consequently can penetrate, with more or less 

 ease, into the molecular interstices of every texture, however 

 impervious or homogeneous ; we must, therefore, regard 

 it as absolutely proved, and as a physical necessity, that 

 circulatory facilities are everywhere afforded and that 

 circulation does actually take place universally within the 

 limits of the individual organism. As water is " to the 

 thirsty ground," so it may be said to be to the living tissue, 

 but in increased proportion, in accordance with the intensity 

 of the vital metabolic changes taking place within the 

 individual tissues. Vessels, channels, or inter-spaces there 

 must, therefore, be throughout the entire structure of a 

 living organism, whereby the nutritive materials can be 

 conveyed to every empty atomic space of every texture of 

 the organism, in metabolic exchange for the worn-out, or 

 effete, atom which, on its displacement, or release, enters 

 what for distinction may be denominated an efferent 

 inter-space, channel, or vessel, for final disposal, so as to 

 obviate obstruction to the afferent atomic circulation and 

 the occurrence of plasmic stasis, admixture, and consequent 

 autotoxis, pathological occurrences known to proceed from 

 certain disease factors observed in mal-assimilation and 

 perturbed metabolism. Circulation of vitally prepared 

 protoplasm is thus seen to characterise all physiological 

 organic processes, and, therefore, all pathological organic 

 processes, and to make up, in a sense, all the vital processes 

 concerned in organic life a realisation, therefore, of the 

 dynamic factors operating the vast circulatory machinery 

 involved becomes a scientific work of great proportions as 

 well as utility. Roughly estimated in their degrees of 

 importance in the dynamics of organic circulation, as seen 

 in man and the higher animal kingdom, we would place 

 foremost in importance the great central engine, the heart, 

 the influence of which is mainly felt throughout the blood- 

 vessels proper, but necessarily in decreasing degree to the 

 remotest circulatory areas embraced within the organism. 



