General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
The existence of the exhalants is rendered evident, 1st. by the
preceding experiment, which is a natural manner of injecting them; 2d.
by artificial injections, which shows there many more vessels than
ordinary; 3d. by transudations that sometimes take place in the cells,
when these injections are driven with much force, transudations that
really form an artificial exhalation; 4th. by natural exhalation, which
is continually going on, and which has for its materials the fat and
the serum; 5th. by accidental exhalations that sometimes take place, as
when the blood is diffused in and colours serous infiltrations, &c.
Few systems in the living economy are furnished with a greater number
of exhalants; I do not speak of those that contribute to its nutrition
and that are consequently found there as in all other organs. The
superabundance of these vessels is owing to the continual exhalation
that is going on there. It is this superabundance which renders, as
we shall see, inflammation so much more frequent in a part where the
cellular texture is in the greatest abundance; it is this that exposes
it to that variety of alterations, in which its texture, loaded with
the different substances it exhales, has a firm appearance, and offers
at one time a fatty substance, at another a gelatinous one, sometimes a
species of scirrhus, &c. &c.
_Absorbents._
The absorbents correspond with the exhalants in the cellular system;
the eye cannot trace them, injections would not reach them. But their
existence there is proved, 1st. by the natural and constant absorption
of fat and serum; 2d. by the more manifest one that produces resolution
of serous infiltrations in dropsies, sanguineous in ecchymosis,
purulent in the different kinds of abscesses that are removed; 3d.
by the disappearance of mild fluids injected into these cells, an
effect that must be owing to the agency of these vessels; 4th. by the
resolution of natural and artificial emphysema, in which the air, or at
least the principles that constitute it, have no other way of escaping.
This is evident when the emphysema arises from a rupture of a bronchial
cell, and when a very little opening is made in the animal, it is
stopped after the air is driven by it into the sub-cutaneous texture;
this I have convinced myself of. 5th. The drying up of external ulcers
is owing to the cellular absorbents. Oftentimes in phthisis the ulcers
are suddenly emptied, and we find in the subject who dies immediately,
only the place that was occupied by pus or sanies; I have already
known two patients to die in this way by a re-absorption almost
instantaneous and exactly analogous to that of external ulcers. 6th.
Where there is the most cellular texture, we meet with the greatest
number of absorbents, and the most of those bodies with a glandular
appearance, in which these vessels ramify. Where the cellular texture
is scarcely discoverable, as in the brain, we can with difficulty see
the absorbent system, &c.
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