TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 279 
tionship between this gas and the air which is expelled from 
the lungs. But the absence of any lesion in the thorax, and 
of any difficulty in the respiration, does not indicate this to be 
the cause of emphysema. Is the gas exhaled by the vessels 
of the cellular tissue? Is it not possible that it arises from 
the digestive organs, and has penetrated into the cellular 
tissue, favoured by the permeability of this tissue ? This 
permeability of the tissues to gas is admitted by certain phy¬ 
siologists, particularly by M. Liebig, the learned professor of 
Giessen, who thinks that part of the air taken in the food 
into the stomach finds its way into the lungs during the act 
of inspiration, and escapes from them by ascending the re¬ 
spiratory tubes. Whatever may be the talents of the learned 
professor, we may be allowed to doubt the correctness of this 
opinion until it is borne out by experiment. But supposing 
this to be the case, that the inspiratory power were sufficient 
to drive the air in the digestive organs towards the lungs, 
separated from them by only a thin partition, something 
more would be required to attract the same air to the cellular 
tissue just under the skin. Would that be done by the act of 
expiration? But why should not the air in the digestive organs 
be driven out by the natural opening by the same power? 
And how is it that emphysema is not of more frequent occur¬ 
rence, for the ingestion of air is normal and constant? 
No doubt the formation of the hitherto absorbed emphy¬ 
sema in the lumbar region, on the left side, which is in close 
proximity to the rumen, is a circumstance which operates in 
favour of the direct passage of the gas from that organ into 
the cellular tissue. If this gas had been analysed and com¬ 
pared with the analysis of that above stated, a favorable argu¬ 
ment might have been the result; but, to the author’s know¬ 
ledge, this has not been done. The researches of MM. 
Gmelin, Lameyran, Fremy, and Lassaigne, have all been 
directed to the gas formed in indigestion ; the carbonic acid, 
the sulphuretted hydrogen, and the carburetted hydrogen, 
have all been noticed; but in all probability they also exist, 
though in less quantities, in the natural state, although they 
have not been stated by Larroque in his analyses of the 
elastic fluids. 
For these reasons, it remains very doubtful whether the 
emphysema which has been described is the result of a direct 
passage of the gas from the rumen into the cellular tissue. 
Let us now examine the question whether it comes from some 
exhalation. It seems to us much more probable that these 
fluids, whatever may be their cause, have been poured into the 
cellular tissue by the exhalants of the capillaries, consequent 
