On Rickets 309 



muscles do not grow in the same proportion as the 

 viscera. 



3. Further, the mesentery is aflfected with enlarged 

 glands and strumous tumours. That the cause of 

 this symptom may be better understood, I shall 

 shortly explain the origin of glands. The nervous 

 juice when mixed with blood in due fermentation, 

 passes into nutritive and fleshy substance ; but if 

 the nerve, replete and turgid, pours out its juice, 

 which is very like white of Qgg^ into the interstices 

 of the flesh, the matter so poured out does not now 

 produce flesh, for want of the blood required for this, 

 but is coagulated into a glandular body very like 

 itself, as is shown by observation. For when I have 

 been about to make some experiment on a dog, I 

 have wounded a nerve : on this occurring, the dog 

 is painfully racked with convulsions : on dissection 

 after about three months, I found a pretty large 

 glandular concretion at the place where the wound 

 had been inflicted, and this seemed to have its origin 

 from the nervous juice escaping from the puncture 

 of the nerve. This being assumed, we see that when 

 the nervous juice is transferred from the replete 

 brain to the abdomen, by the before-mentioned vagus 

 and intercostal nerves, in such quantity that it cannot 

 be transformed into the substance of the viscera, that 

 juice is deposited in the interstices of the membranes, 

 of which there are many, and there gives rise to 

 numerous strumous swellings. And not in the 

 abdomen only, but wherever there are nerves arising 

 from the brain and turgid with that juice, there 

 strumous tumours may be seen : but these disappear 

 soon after the disease is cured ; for the nervous juice 

 which was poured out in such abundance from the 

 brain, by the nerves thence arising, and produced the 



