22 



taking the slightest exercise, they were in great danger of suffocation, 

 Respiration in such persons is at times interrupted by deep sighs, and 

 their heart, probably overloaded with fat, expels with difficulty the blood 

 within its cavities. 



CV. According to modern chemists, the use of fat is to take from the 

 system a part of its hydrogen. When the lungs or liver are diseased, 

 when respiration or the biliary secretion do not carry out of the system, 

 a sufficient quantity of that oily and inflammable principle, fat forms in 

 a greater proportion. They appeal to the result of the experiment of 

 shutting up a goose, whose liver is to be fattened, in a confined cage, 

 placed in a hot and dark situation, and in gorging it with paste, of which 

 it eats the more greedily, as being unable to stir, it gratifies its inclina- 

 tion to action, by exerting the organs of digestion. Notwithstanding 

 this quantity of food, the bird becomes emaciated, is affected with a kind 

 of marasmus, its liver softens, grows fatter, more oily, and attains an 

 enormous size. 



This experiment, and many other facts, prove, that the secretions from 

 which analogous products are formed, may mutually supply each other ; 

 but can we admit the chemical theory bf the use of 1'at when we recollect 

 that frequently, in the most corpulent persons, respiration and the secre- 

 tion of bile are performed with great freedom and with no difficulty; 

 while the difficult respiration attending pulmonary consumption, and the 

 difficult flow of the bile from an obstruction of the liver, are always ac- 

 companied with complete marasmus. 



Whatever moderates the activity 

 bring on adipose plethora. Thus an i 

 profuse bleedings, castration, sometir 

 which the cellular tissue appears affe 

 actual adipose infiltration, which ma) 

 rise to tumours called steatomatous. 



the circulatory system, tends to 

 active state of the mind and body, 

 es induce obesity, an affection in 

 ed with atony, and undergoes an 

 be compared to that which gives 

 f the energy of the heart and arte- 



ries is too great, emaciation is always the consequence; when, on the con- 

 trary, the sanguineous system is languid, there is formed a merely gela- 

 tinous fat, and the corpulence is a mere state of bloatedness. 



This incompletely formed fluid, wl^ch distends the parts in persons of 

 a leucophlegmatic habit, is but an ifnperfect kind of fat; it resembles 

 the marrow or the medullary juice which is merely a very liquid fat, 

 whose consistence diminishes when animals become lean. Inclosed with- 

 in the cells of the osseous tissue, in cavities whose sides cannot collapse, 

 and whose dimensions must always remain the same, the marrow of which 

 they are never free, is of different degrees of density; and what authors 

 say of its diminished quantity, must be understood as applying to the di- 

 minution of its consistence. 



CVI. The secretion of the marrow is, like that of the fat, a mere arte- 

 rial transudation ; it is performed fyy the medullary membrane, which is 

 thin, transparent, and cellular, which lines the inside of the central cavity 

 of the long bones, and extends over all the cells of their spongy substance. 

 The medullary membrane, when^n a healthy state, does not give any 

 marks of relative sensibility. In all the amputations I have performed, 

 and they have not been few: in all the operations of the same kind at 

 which I have been present, whatever the bone was, whether it was divi- 

 ded near a joint or in the middle of its body. I never knew the patient 

 complain of pain, provided the limb was well supported by the assistants, 

 and provided no jerk was given by the operator himself. In that opera- 



