exciting cause is applied for a sufficient length of time, the extreme vessels lose their contractility, they are weakened, become dilated, and the contained blood circulates slowly. When inflammation is fairly established in a part, the capillaries become considerably dilated, and the blood is often completely stagnated in the inflammatory point. In the circumference of this focus, it is accelerated as formerly noticed: the blood is probably stagnated for two or three days in the capillaries and in the contiguous cellular tissue, when the action is at all violent. It, however, begins to move again; it loses its colouring matter, while stagnated; the fibrin is assimilated to the neighbouring parts, or rather effused, so as to cause the thickening, and the blood globules have possibly undergone a change, and been converted into those of pus. If the disease be of a limited extent, and without breach of surface, they are carried into the circulation very gradually, and in such small numbers as not to produce injury to the health; otherwise the contamination of the blood by a large quantity of pus causes inflammatory fever. It is probable that the permanent dilatation occurs in consequence of the larger vessels in the immediate vicinity being incited, and propelling more blood into the minute capillaries than they can readily return into the corresponding veins; and in consequence of so great a degree of distension being produced, the vessels are incapable of again speedily contracting; the blood, also, from being stagnant, becomes of a darker colour. The larger trunks propelling blood into the distended and comparatively inert capillaries, which are incapable of transmitting into the veins the same quantity of fluid which they receive, will cause the throbbing or pulsating sensation. The blood circulating in the parts around is sometimes apparently changed in quality; it is redder, flocculi appear floating in it, and the globules disappear. These last may have been broken down, or partial decomposition may have taken place from a loss of vital power in the vessels themselves.