The permeability of the cellular texture has been much exaggerated, or rather it has been presented under a point of view different from that in which it is shown by nature. It is thus that many physicians, thinking that it could be pervaded indifferently by all the fluids of the animal economy, have believed that these fluids formed there, currents in different directions more or less irregular. Thus the sweat has been considered as the transmission by the skin of the albuminous fluid of the cellular texture, which, according to some moderns, is drawn out with the caloric that is constantly disengaged. They have thought, also, that the permeability of this texture would explain the rapid passage of drinks to the bladder. They have explained by it too, the promptness with which sweat is produced by warm liquors, &c. All these theories, that examination never proves, are repugnant to the known laws of our economy, laws which show us the fluids constantly circulating in the vessels, in consequence of the vital forces, of organic sensibility and contractility which they possess, and not as being extravasated to move irregularly in the cellular texture. Moreover, I have never found any portion of drink in the cellular texture of animals immediately after they have taken it. I have tried many of these experiments upon dogs, after having deprived them for some time of drink, that they might drink the more. The cellular texture in the neighbourhood of the stomach and intestines, that especially which, placed behind the mesentery, communicates with the pelvis where the bladder is situated, having been attentively examined, did not appear to me to contain any fluid; it was analogous to that of the other parts of the body. Besides, as we shall see hereafter, these phenomena can be explained in a very natural manner. The cellular texture is permeable, then, only to fat and lymph; and yet it appears that but little use is made in an ordinary state of this permeability by these two fluids, which remain in their cells, until absorption takes them up. We do not see them pass from one to another; they are stagnant, if we may so say. It is only in serous infiltrations, in effusions of pus, in one word, in a morbid state, that the cellular permeability becomes apparent. We can only consider, then, the cellular texture as the reservoir, in which are formed the serum and the fat. After death the cellular texture is every where penetrated by fluids, which pass not only across the communicating openings of its cells, but also through the pores which it has, like all the solids; hence the infiltration of the integuments of the back, in dead bodies that have been laid upon it for a length of time; hence also the passage of the bile through the texture, which separates the gall bladder from the duodenum, and by which means this intestine is discoloured, &c. &c. But these phenomena have nothing in common with those that take place in the living body.