Gravity, external motions, different compressions, &c. have upon the motion of this fluid, the same influence as upon that of the veins; gravity especially has much influence. We know that if the powers are a little diminished after long diseases, too long standing renders the legs œdematous; hence why they are always more swelled in the evening than in the morning. As to compression, if it is only moderately great and acts upon many absorbents, it also produces œdema. It is not the size of the surface compressed that has an influence upon this phenomenon; it is only the number of absorbents that pass through this surface. Thus by the head of the humerus being in the axilla, the arm is frequently made to swell, whilst more extensive compressions across the deltoid muscle, where there are fewer absorbents, do not produce this effect. From these phenomena, it is necessary then that there should be the same means to favour the lymphatic circulation, that there are to aid the venous. These means are especially the anastomoses; it is by them that the first of these circulations is continued, notwithstanding all the external obstacles that our clothes in certain places create, notwithstanding the different pressure that the organs make upon each other. It is only when the whole of the absorbents of a part is compressed, that the motion of the lymph is interrupted. Thus the womb becoming very large in pregnancy, and pressing upon all those of the lower extremities, these extremities become dropsical. I hardly know any organ in the abdomen but this, which by its position can produce these general infiltrations by compression. The liver and all the other organs are not capable of producing a similar phenomenon. When dropsy takes place from an affection of them, it is rather because the functions of the exhalants are increased. _Remarks upon the Difference of Dropsies that are produced by the increase of exhalation, and those that are the effect of a diminution of absorption._ This leads to an observation that appears to me to be very important in dropsies, viz. the determining when the defect of the action of the absorbents produces them, and when they arise from the increase of that of the exhalants.