CHAP. II.] ON FLUIDITY OF THE BLOOD. 129 



laboriously, when the fluidity of the blood is les- 

 sened, or else accelerated with frightful rapidity, 

 whenever it so happens that fever prevails : local 

 inflammation, by the same rule, must cause an 

 unusual flow of blood to the part affected ; and, as 

 most of the impurities of the system will then be 

 drawn towards it, at that place must they leave the 

 occasion of the most direful effects. In proof of 

 this doctrine, it happens frequently, that when an 

 animal is attacked with inflammatory tumours at 

 two places at once, the greater evil of the two 

 increases, whilst the lesser one " runs off" as it is 

 called, or gets cured of itself. So, on the contrary, 

 when a diseased horse {glanderous, for example) is 

 well fed and well kept, he not unfrequently over- 

 comes his disorder without medicine, to the great 

 wonder of the unknowing ; the solution whereof is, 

 that the constant supply of new blood has quite 

 changed the nature of the animal, his disease has 

 been " taken up," or absorbed, by the animal sys- 

 tem, and ultimately carried off in the common eva- 

 cuations. In short, absorption and effusion are 

 the great internal secrets of animal life ; although 

 we cannot say with certainty how they are carried 

 on, it is no less a positive law of nature, that the 

 veins at their commencement in the glands absorb, 

 or suck up, the blood that is deposited there by the 

 arteries, and separated by the lymphatics ; equally 

 well known is it, that effusion takes place, of arte- 

 rial blood, into much larger veins, as well as from 

 one part of the system into another, internally. 



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