In nearly all cases, when the origin of the constitutional disease cannot be traced to the introduction of diseased fluid into the system through an open vein, it will be found that the part primarily injured has wanted the degree of vigour, requisite to establish and maintain healthy adhesive inflammation. Upon another occasion,[31] I have endeavoured to show that, where lymph is effused around a poisoned wound, the virus will find its way less easily along the absorbent vessels, than when no such effusion has taken place; and that when, in such a wound, the effusion of lymph is checked or prevented, as by the administration of mercury, a larger proportion of cases will indicate an affection of the lymphatic system, than when the natural process has not been interfered with. There can be little doubt, that the same principle may be observed with regard to ordinary wounds. The number of cases in which the absorbents inflame, will be in inverse proportion to the number of those in which the original wounds are circumscribed by healthy adhesive inflammation. In Case XXVII, it is mentioned, that the surface of a muscle, implicated in the original lesion, was as cleanly dissected as if done with a scalpel, thus showing the total absence of any surrounding effusion of lymph. The absence of, or defect in, the process of adhesion may thus be associated with inflammation of the absorbents, as the want of "union by first intention" has been shown to be connected with inflammation of the veins (Section ii.) [31] LONDON JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, vol. i, p. 799. The minuteness of the absorbent vessels, and the changes which their contents undergo in their glands, prevent any unhealthy fluids from being as readily recognised in them as in the veins. But when the progress of inflammation can be traced along these vessels from a wound, towards the centre of the circulation, marked, as it often is, at intervals, by the formation of abscesses, we cannot doubt that an irritating fluid has found its way along their canals: and when the constitutional symptoms, which arise at the same time, terminate in the formation of purulent deposits (as in Case XXIX), we cannot but admit that the absorbent vessels are the direct means by which, in such cases, diseased secretions are poured into the blood, and the system becomes infected. It would, therefore, appear that there are two principal conditions, under which local disease may produce a general infection of the system by the direct introduction of vitiated fluids into the blood. The first of these is connected with defective union in injured veins; the second is associated with want of healthy adhesion in inflamed lymphatics.