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Show Cunclustmz (y‘tbe First Part. Cimt‘lusiou (y‘ l/Ju First Purl". fected in scrophula, these may be the cause of the affection of thc‘lymphatic «rlands. But whether thelymphatics are the cause ofthe inflammation or not, They increase the disease, and render it more quickly fatal: they ultimately are servation of the animal: but every day's experience proves the contrary ofthis. The lactcals and the lymphatics take tip the most irritating and sti- mulating substances. I have already mentioned that they took up spirit of 112e- concerned in the erosion of the blood-vessels of this viscus, and fatal removed, gradually is lungs the of substance the y ensue: s frequentl morrhage turpentine, solution of cantharides, and solution of corrosive sublimate. and the advantage of breathing atmospheric air is diminished in proportion to its exhibition as a medicine, on account of the pain that, after acertain pe- riod, it always produces in the bones. Dr. M'Kenzie, who had long resided 122 this loss of substance; the debility increases, and the patient dies. I have known even the whole of the lungs of one side removed from this cause. In other parts of the body, part of the coats of arteries have also occasionally been removed, and fatal hzemorrhages have thence ensued: part of the coats of the intestines have been removed, and the faeees escaping into the cavrty 0f the abdomen have produced peritoneal inflammation, and killed in a few days. A young lady died after two or three days illness; before this she had been in perfect health: I was called, but she was dead before I got to the house -. from her history I was at a loss how to account for her death; but on opening the abdomen, 3 day or two after, I found the contents of the stomach in that cavity; that they had induced peritoneal inflamma- mation, and killed. On cxaminingthe stomach, I found a hole in it large enough to admit the end of my finger; this hole had been formed by ab- sorption of part of the substance of the stomach from scrophulous ulcera- tion; butits edges had adhered by inflammation to the under surface of the small lobe of the liver; this inflammation was evidently raised, by the powers of the body, to prevent the accident which happened, and if no violent vomiting had taken place, and tore this adhesion at this par- ticular time, she might have lived for years, notwithstanding the ulcer. ‘I have known part of the substance of the brain itself removed; and there is hardly a solid in the body, which we have not seen, on some occaSion or another, suffer this loss of substance. In the fifth place, the lymphatics and lacteals take up irritating substances not generated in our own bodies; the infectious matter ofdisease from other: persons; poisons, animal, vegetable, and mineral, from different quarters. -Boerhaavc had an idea that the orifices of the lacteals wouldtakc up no i23 Arsenic itselfmay be absorbed; and practitioners are obliged to desist from in Constantinople, told me that the plague was only to be caught by con- tact, and that the btiboe was always found in that limb which had touched the infectious matter. From still later testimony of the physicians who praCtice at present in those countries where the plague is found, as trans- mitted to us by the excellent Howard, it seems probable that contact is the principal mode of infection. * From the same authority, it is evi- dent that buboes in the groin and arm-pits, are often the first symptoms of infection. The resemblance here to the usual mode of infection by the lues vencrca, is very strong, and gives room to suspCCt that they are both introduced into the body by the lymphatics. Mr. Howard's own opinion is, that the plague is not generally received by contact, (by which I suppose he means the poisons being applied to the skin ina fluid form) but by inoculation, and breathing the putrid effluvia. Inoculation is more than contact, as we generally understand it; it is the insertion ofinfectious matter by a wound: and breathing the infected air, may be an application of infectious particles to the orifices of the lymphatics of the lungs. The infectious matter is, most probably, in most cases, taken into the body by the lymphatics of the skin; and it is at least probable, that it is taken into the blood, in the same manner, by the lymphatics of the lungs. That it commonly requires some days to produce the effects of the plague, is another argument in favour ofit affecting the body through the medium of the lymphatics. That buboes are not always the first symp- toms of the plague, is no more against what I am endeavouring to support, than that patients are often infected with the lues venerca, without a buboe fluid but what was perfectly globular and mild, and he considered this Cir- ‘ The jev physician, at Smyrna, however, says, that it may be caught at the distance of some yards. The glands ofthc groin are also more frequently affected than those of the cumstance as a guard on the constitution, for the more certain pre- servation axilla; butas the hand is oftener the part of contact than the foot, these two circumstances may seem againstme. R2 . r. . rafflwkmw‘r'» is |