ABSINTHINE. 
12 
or relief. By this unnatural separation, the so- 
cial duties are abandoned, and their connecting 
links, on which depends the very existence of 
civil life, are broken asunder.” Yet no tenant, 
on even a bad absentee’s estate, will ever fall 
into vice, or into sluggardliness, or even perhaps 
into serious difficulty, without grievous fault of 
his own. A landlord’s failing to perform his 
peculiar duty, relaxes not in the slightest the 
moral responsibility of the tenant, but ought 
rather to rouse him to increased firmness in re- 
solution and assiduity in conduct. Every tenant 
ought, on grounds of religion, of morality, or 
even of plain common sense, to make the most 
of his circumstances; and, if he wants the en- 
couragements and aids of a resident and good 
landlord, he ought to have spirit enough to do 
| perfectly well without them, and dignity enough 
to prove to all around him, that he at least— 
though only a poor and hard-working tenant— 
can live in comfort on his native soil. 
ABSINTHINE. The bitter principle of the 
wormwood, or Artemisia absinthium. It has 
tonic virtues. See Wormwoop. 
ABSORBENT IN CHEMISTRY. Any sub- 
| stance possessing the power of receiving liquid 
or gaseous bodies into itself, with or without 
chemical action. 
ABSORBENT SOILS. Such soils as most 
freely absorb moisture from the atmosphere. 
Yet though the absorbing capacity of soils is 
usually defined as having reference only to mois- 
ture from the atmosphere, it is equally distinct, 
and scarcely less important, in reference to 
gases from the atmosphere, and from decompos- 
ing vegetables. See articles ArRaTron and Sorts. 
ABSORBENT SYSTEM. An intricate, mi- 
nute, and wondrously ramified organism of vessels 
and glands in the animal structure of man and 
quadrupeds, for conveying into the circulation 
such fluids as are requisite for repairing the con- 
tinual consumption of the blood. Every portion 
of even the more solid parts of the animal body 
undergoes continual progressive change, or suf- 
fers a gradual dissolution of all its existing sub- 
stance, and a correspondingly gradual accession 
and appropriation of entirely new matter. The 
grand organism for repairing the constant waste 
‘and dissolution of the solid parts of the body is 
the circulation and deposition of the blood; and 
the correlative organism—or that for supplying 
the consequent continual consumption of the 
blood—is the absorbent system. This system de- 
rives its materials partly from the juices which 
are formed by food, and evolved out of the pro- 
cess of digestion,—partly from gaseous substances, 
received through the pores of the skin,—and 
partly from the melting down of such minute 
portions of the body as have completed their func- 
tions in the animal economy, or of such as can be 
spared for compensating temporary or occasional 
deficiencies in the quantity of the juices supplied 
by the digestion of food. The vessels or tubes of 
ABSORBENT. 
the absorbent system are thin, nearly transpa- 
rent, and very minute; they appear to be ex- 
tremely delicate in their sides, and yet they pos- 
sess comparatively great strength; they exhibit 
a contractile power, and have numerous valves 
which compel the fluids within them to flow only 
in one direction; and their chief or grand tubes 
are provided with numerous glands, or gland-like 
organs, which seem to elaborate some requisite 
change upon fluids in their progress toward de- 
position in the vascular system. The glands, in- 
deed, are not very well understood; yet they ob- 
viously accomplish some important purpose in 
preparing the fluids for their destination; and 
one or more of them are concerned with every 
stream of absorbent fluid in the course of its pas- 
sage. The glands may be seen in the mesentery 
of the ox or the horse, when the animal is opened ; 
or they may be distinctly felt in the neck or under 
the jaw. 
The tubes of the absorbent system constitute 
two divisions or sub-systems, called respectively 
the lacteals and the lymphatics. “The lacteal 
absorbents are situated in the mesentery and in- 
testines, whence they draw chyle, a nutritious 
fluid by which the blood is nourished or aug- 
mented. ‘The chyle is carried forward from the 
mesentery into a tube called the thoracic duct, 
which, passing up by the side of the aorta, pours 
its contents into the heart through the medium 
of the jugular vein. The lymphatic absorbents 
differ from the latter only in being situated over 
the whole body, and being the recipients of the 
various matters of the body ; whereas the lacteals 
appear to absorb the chyle only.” The lacteals 
open, by exceedingly minute mouths, on the inner 
surface of the stomach and intestines, and con- 
stitute the connecting organism between diges- 
tion and the supply of blood ; and the lymphatics 
open on many interior parts of the body, and on 
nearly the whole of its exterior parts,—they are 
so intricately ramified and so exceedingly multi- 
tudinous as to defy enumeration by an anatomist, 
—they eventually convey their contents to the 
same destination as the lacteals,—and they re- 
move the residue of nutrition, take up such por- 
tions of the body as can be spared for compensat- 
ing deficient nourishment, imbibe fluids through 
the pores of the skin, and serve, under stimulat- 
ing medicinal action, to carry off foreign or un- 
healthy juices in various cases of disease. In all 
animals, the lymphatics suffer inflammation in 
the vicinity of sores; and in the horse they are 
subject to a peculiar disorder called Fancy: which 
see. “ Weuse our power over these vessels in the 
horse medicinally. We stimulate the absorbents 
to take up diseased solutions of fluids from vari- 
ous parts of the body, as in watery swellings in 
the legs, by mercury and by friction, or by pres- 
sure in the way of bandage. When deposits are 
made of hard matter, or ligament, or bone, we 
stimulate them by blistering or by firing. It is 
by stimulating the absorbents, that splints and 
a 
