2(}8 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
the natural course of the absorbents, and as the matter is de¬ 
tained at each valve, for there the principal inflammation takes 
place, yet the inflammation is evidently to be traced along the 
whole course of the absorbents, and between each knot is the 
corded vessel. 
Other Absorbents at length involved .—At length the virus 
reaches the thoracic duct, mingles with the circulating fluid, 
and is conveyed with the blood to every part of the frame. It 
seems not to affect the lining membrane of the artery or the vein; 
they are not corded, nor do they ulcerate: but it is deposited 
with the other ingredients of the blood on every tissue and every 
portion of the frame. Deposited there it is harmless, so far as 
that tissue or part is concerned ; but on that tissue and part, ab¬ 
sorbents open, and they take up and carry away this foreign bo¬ 
dy thus deposited. The superficial lymphatics first go to work, 
and they are most susceptible to the empoisonment of the virus : 
they become corded and knotted at the valves, and they ulcerate, 
and we have there the farcy bud, and the connecting corded ab¬ 
sorbent. 
There are a certain set of these absorbents which seem most 
disposed to take up the poison, or are most readily affected by it, 
and these are the distant superficial absorbents, and principally 
those of the inside of the thigh ; and the cords appear, and the 
ulcers break along the course of the principal veins of the thigh, 
because in company with them the absorbents are found. 
The deeper-seated Absorbents affected. —But the action and 
the mischief are not long confined to the superficial absorbents ; 
the deeper-seated ones are soon implicated—those which open on 
the cellular texture, or the deeper and minute structure of every 
part. 
Different Result off Inflammation in them. —Here the inflamma¬ 
tion of the lymphatic assumes another form. There are no valves 
here, and consequently no knots; neither is the action confined 
to the larger branches or trunks, but the myriads of capillary 
absorbents, which penetrate every part, become inflamed and 
thickened and enlarged, and they cease to discharge their func¬ 
tion ; they neither take up the fluid exhaled on various surfaces, 
nor the interstitial deposit which is the usual accompaniment of 
inflammation in the neighbourhood of the affected vessels, and so 
there is engorgement of the substance of various parts, swellings 
of the head, about the chest, of the hinder legs; sudden, pain¬ 
ful, enormous, and distinguished by a heat and tenderness which do 
into accompany any other enlargement. It is not merely an ac¬ 
cumulation of fluid or interstitial deposit; it is a mass of minute, 
inflamed, absorbents, and therefore hot and intensely painful. 
