AND ANIMAL LIFE. 461 



confidence in any plan, unless attended by al- 

 most immediate improvement of symptoms. 



DLXIII. From obvious local effects, we are 

 sometimes enabled to estimate the nature and 

 extent of general effects, which are otherwise 

 not to be appreciated, produced by the opera- 

 tion of those causes which are supposed to have 

 occasioned consequences only of a circumscribed 

 character. Vomiting has often been found use- 

 ful in dropsies of the scrotum and ovarium. 

 The good result has generally been attributed to 

 the sympathy existing between the stomach and 

 these organs of the body. The disease is readily 

 traced to those causes which derange the circu- 

 lation of blood in the part ; and I have already 

 endeavoured to prove, by direct experiment, that 

 vomiting has a more extensive action than the 

 mere agitation of the system, or the awakening 

 of any mysterious sympathy. Its operation tends 

 to improve the properties of the bloodby diminish- 

 ing the proportion existing in the lungs, agree- 

 ably to the principles of the first chapter, and it 

 also tends to equalize the distribution of the same 

 throughout the body. These two important 

 conditions are not confined to any single organ 

 of the system, but are common to every viscus 

 and tissue. Is it not, therefore, probable that 

 the accumulated serum disappears from an ex- 

 cited action in the absorbents, derived exclusive- 

 ly from these two conditions of the sanguiferous sys- 



