OF THE TERMINATION OF THE VESSELS. 251 



teguments or cicatrices. All the accidental productions ana- 

 logous to the organic tissues, are in the same condition. 

 The greater number of morbid productions, which have no 

 analogous case in the organism, are, on the contrary, deprived 

 of vessels. These latter are formed in the cases alluded to in 

 the same manner as in the embryo. The mass in which they 

 are formed, consisting frequently in a coagulated liquid, at first 

 without vessels, presents in the beginning isolated vesicles, by 

 which uniting, form passages or canals through the substance, 

 or without distinct arid proper parietes; these vessels after- 

 wards communicate with those of the surrounding organs; 

 they frequently remain for some time more or less different, 

 and not unfrequently always so, from the primitive natural 

 vessels, either by their manner of dividing, or particularly by 

 the absence or tenuity and softness of their parietes; in many 

 cases, on the contrary, the vessels acquire in time a texture 

 altogether similar to that of the other vessels. 



372. Amongst the alterations to which the vessels are 

 subject, some are common to the three kinds; such as the di- 

 latation and wounds; the others are peculiar to each of them. 

 The former even present very considerable differences in each 

 species, and require to be indicated separately. 



ARTICLE II. 

 OF THE TERMINATION OF THE VESSELS. 



373. The terminations of the vessels, fines vasorum, are 

 the last ramifications of the arteries and the first radicles of 

 the veins and of the lymphatic vessels. Their knowledge is 

 a subject of minute anatomical investigation, which has most 

 exercised the patience of observers and the imagination of 

 etyologists, who expected, with some appearance of plausibi- 

 lity, to discover in it the secret of the greater number of the 

 functions and of diseases. 



374. In almost every part of the body, the vascular termi- 

 nations are branches and radicles of an extreme tenuity, and 

 which can only be observed by the help of a microscope. In 



