CHAP. II.] MATERIALS OF TUMOURS. 309 



issue. General inflammation (fever), it is allowed 

 on all hands, begets something offensive, and so 

 does partial or local inflammation of any organ 

 through which the blood passes, particularly of the 

 liver and kidneys, through which the whole mass 

 gets filtered, as it were ; and nature's efforts to get 

 rid of this offence against her rules are evinced in 

 swelling of the external parts, in the inflammation 

 thereof, and subsequent escape of the offensive 

 something, whereby a cure is effected. 



All this is agreed upon by those who deny the 

 necessary pre-existence of a general ill state of 

 health, as well as by those who already know, or 

 have yet to learn, that the liver, that acknowledged 

 cleanse?*, permits much grosser materials to pass 

 through it than those offensive matters, or gross 

 humours, which we contend reside in the blood, 

 and constitute disorder of one kind or other on the 

 surface, or at least predispose the animal to acquire 

 such, according as circumstances may determine it 

 one way or the other. Seeing that such gross sub- 

 stances as bits of straw, chaff, &c. have issued from 

 a vein on blood-letting, is it too much to concede 

 the ultimate point that the feculent humours which 

 constitute tumours, farcy, &c. may not in like man- 

 ner find their way into the circulation, and be de- 

 tained at that particular part which is rendered by 

 some accident less capable of continuing the harm- 

 ful matter in a fluid state ? A blow, a gall, a liga- 

 ture, or a bruise, are known to occasion this dis- 

 ability, and bring on disease in one of its varied 



