The constant compression made upon the limbs by their aponeuroses, besides the uses pointed out, has that of favouring the circulation of the red and white fluids. Thus varices, which are very rare in the deep veins which accompany the arteries, are extremely common in the superficial ones placed beyond the influence of this compression, which art imitates by the application of tight bandages, the effect of which is so advantageous in many external diseases arising from the want of tone, and the relaxation of the parts. I have uniformly observed that the serous infiltrations always begin in the sub-cutaneous cellular texture, that it is only in an advanced stage of dropsy, that we find effusion in that which is under the aponeuroses, and that in general it does not contain as much serum in proportion as the other. In most of the great distensions of dropsical limbs, when the skin is removed and the subjacent water has flown off, the limb covered by its aponeurosis, is scarcely larger than in the ordinary state. The muscles not protected by these coverings, like those situated on the sides of the abdomen for example, become dropsical much more easily. _Aponeuroses for Partial Covering._ These aponeuroses are met with in insulated parts, in front of the abdomen, on the head, the back, &c.; they are usually destined to retain in place a certain number of muscles which they do not surround on all sides, like the preceding, but with which they correspond only in one direction. Their thickness is much less than that of the preceding ones; it is adapted to the efforts that they are to support. All have a tensor muscle which proportions their degree of relaxation or of tension to the effort of the neighbouring muscles. The anterior rectus, by means of its intersections, and the pyramidalis, perform this office for the abdominal aponeuroses; the small posterior dorsocostals do it for that which covers the muscles of the vertebral foramina; the auricular, the frontal and the occipital for that of the cranium. The aponeuroses of covering, whose use is limited to one muscle only, like that, for example, of the temporal, want the tensor muscle, and have consequently the same degree of tension always; it is on this account no doubt that they have a very compact and thick texture, as that which I have just mentioned is an example.