120 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



of the cells, should we regard them as closed on all sides, and 

 communicating only after the rupture of their walls, or as 

 pierced or porous cells, opening into those adjoining, or finally, 

 as areola, spaces open on all sides, like those irregular ones, 

 which subsist between the fibres and laminae of the cellular 

 tissue? The latter appears the most probable. But these areolae 

 in their ordinary state, are of an extreme smallness, micro- 

 scopic with contiguous parietes, and the enlargement they ex- 

 perience by infiltration, inflation, etc, tearing and altering them 

 greatly, can give no exact idea respecting them. 



144. The cellular tissue, in other respects, is precisely as 

 though it were spongy, liquids and gases penetrating it with 

 the greatest facility. In fact, 1st, the serum, in the dropsy 

 of this tissue, always flows into its most depending parts, or 

 into those which offer the least resistance; the situation of the 

 patient has much influence, as to the place it occupies; exter- 

 nal pressure displaces it equally; one single incision often suf- 

 fices for its issue; 2d, the water thrown in by artificial injec- 

 tions, flows through the cellular tissue in the same manner 

 from cell to cell; 3d, air infiltrated in emphysema, and that 

 which is artificially introduced, present the same phenomena; 

 4th, in echymosis, the blood is infiltrated in a similar way, 

 spreads extensively through the cellular tissue, and is dissemi- 

 nated more and more. All this demonstrates a general com- 

 munication between the areolae: those who do not admit these 

 to exist, explain these facts by the slight consistence of the 

 cellular tissue. Whether the areolar fibres or lamina, of the 

 cellular tissue, be inherent in this tissue, or are only the effects 

 of the various agents of distension, it is always certain, that in 

 this respect, it presents remarkable differences. In certain 

 places it is always fibrous or filamentous; in others, it is chiefly 

 laminated, or lameliated, as in the eye-lids, scrotum, prepuce, 

 the labia of the vulva, and between the very moveable mus- 

 cles; the more soft and lameliated, the larger are the areolae it 

 forms; and these large areolae. seem to be the first rudiments 

 of the serous cavities. 



145. When in thin lamina the cellular tissue is colourless; 

 it appears whitish when its thickness is increased, and particu- 



