It follows from what I have said, that whenever the organic sensibility of the absorbents is altered in any way, absorption must necessarily experience a corresponding derangement; now this is what constantly happens. Serum often bathes for whole months the absorbent orifices, in dropsy, without raising their sensibility sufficiently to be taken up by them. Let any cause increase this property, instantly absorption takes place. Observe some indolent tumours which remain for a long time in the same state by the stagnation of their fluids, they are immediately discussed when certain medicines applied to them rouse the dormant sensibility of their absorbents. Discutients do not act upon the fluids themselves; they do not attenuate, or cut them, according to the vague language of physicians, but by changing the degree of force of the absorbents, they render them able to act. It is so true that it is in this way that different resolutions are effected, that often a slight degree of inflammation is previously necessary to their development; all surgeons know this. Desault did not consider most of the swellings of the testicles as an obstacle to the operation for hydrocele by injection. On the contrary it often happened, that after the irritation produced in the testicles by the surrounding membrane, the enlargement disappeared, which was only kept up by the want of energy in the absorbents. The alterations of organic sensibility can diminish, increase, or variously modify this property. Let us cease to wonder then at the extreme variety of the absorptions; let us not be astonished, if many fluids, besides those ordinarily taken up, can pass into the blood by the absorbents; if the bile, the urine, the mucous fluids, which are usually rejected, can enter the circulation; if the blood effused in the cellular texture is taken up by these vessels. The forces of life impress, by their extreme variety, the same character on all the functions over which they preside. Much has been said of putrid matters passing into the blood, and there serving as a cause for diseases. This infection of the blood has undoubtedly been exaggerated; but I am convinced that in many cases it is real. Why are the colour, consistence, odour, and nature of the excrements so very variable? If the same substances are always absorbed from the aliments, it is evident that the residue of these aliments would always be the same. Observe the innumerable varieties of the urine, the bile, the mucous fluids, &c. according to the difference of the principles that concur to form them. Why should not the chyle present the same variations? it would be the only fluid of its kind in the animal economy if it did not change under many circumstances. Now, whence can these changes come, if not from this, that the lacteals present numberless varieties in their organic sensibility, varieties, each of which admits only certain principles and rejects the others?