We see in all acute diseases, that the skin very easily perceives the sympathetic influence of diseased organs, that it is many times alternately dry or moist, oftentimes in the same day. I am convinced that the cellular texture experiences the same alterations as the skin, and that if we could see what is going on there, we should perceive that its cells are more or less moist, or more or less dry, according to the kind of influence it receives; it is to this also that must be referred the different state of bodies that have died of acute diseases, which present innumerable varieties in their cellular serum.
Most physicians consider in too general a manner a number of symptoms, which, to speak correctly, do not depend as they imagine, upon the disease, but wholly upon a sympathetic affection produced by the diseased organ upon the sound ones, which, according as they are affected, give rise to different phenomena truly foreign to the disease, that sometimes render it complicated but do not form an essential part of it; they can take place or not, and the disease remains the same.
Observe that organic sensibility and contractility are almost always in action in cellular sympathies, because these are the two vital forces essentially predominant in that system. Thus sensible organic contractility and animal contractility are particularly exercised in muscular sympathies, according as the system of organic muscles, or that of the muscles of animal life, receive sympathetic excitement.
The cellular system not only receives the influence of other organs in its sympathies, but it exercises its own upon them. In phlegmon, which is the inflammatory state of this system, if the tumour is considerable, different alterations are oftentimes discoverable in the functions of the brain, the heart, the liver, the stomach, &c. Sympathetic vomiting, which is called an overflow of bile, delirium, &c. are phenomena that are seen with large phlegmonous swellings without belonging to the disease itself. Art avails itself of the influence of the diseased cellular system upon other organs, in the introduction of setons. Oftentimes in diseases of the eyes, a seton produces an effect that cannot be obtained from a blister: why? because the relation that exists between the cellular texture and the eye, is more active than that which unites the latter to the integuments.
Characters of the vital properties.
After what has been said, we see that the vital activity is sufficiently evident in the cellular system. In this point of view, it is much superior to other organs that are white like it, and among which it has been ranked, such as the aponeuroses, the tendons, the cartilages, the ligaments, &c., organs remarkable for the obscurity of their vital forces and the dullness of their functions. Thus the phenomena of inflammation go through their different periods much quicker in this system. Their progress is very rapid, compared to that of different tumours that appear in the systems of which I have just spoken.
Suppuration takes place here with a rapidity of which we have an example in but few of the organs. Every one knows the fluid that comes from this suppuration. Its colour, its consistence, all its external qualities have become the type to which we refer the ideas that we form of pus; so that that which does not resemble it, is considered to be pus of a bad kind, or as we say sanious. This opinion is incorrect. Certainly the pus that flows from a bone, a muscle, the skin in erisypelas, the mucous membranes in catarrh, is of a good kind so long as the inflammation is regularly going through its periods; it is however totally different from cellular pus. As this is most frequently observed, especially in surgery, we have formed a general idea of laudable, as of sanious pus. Cutaneous, mucous, osseous pus, &c. have each their peculiar sanies, which differs among them according to the vital alterations of the organ, from which it is derived. So that the pus of each system differs from that of the others, in the same way as the alterations of which it is susceptible are different from their purulent alterations.
Has the cellular texture peculiar vital modifications in those organs to whose structure it contributes? From what has been said above, it seems hardly probable. All that I have been saying, applies to the system considered in the interstices of the organs, separate from all combination with their structure. It is possible however that its vital activity is diminished in the cartilages, the tendons, &c., that it is increased a little in the skin, that its life, in general tends to an equilibrium with that of the parts in which it is found; but these are conjectures that nothing positive confirms.
That which ought not to escape us here, is the manifest difference of vitality that exists between the texture of layers and filaments almost every where spread, and the texture that is wholly filamentous, which is exterior to the mucous surfaces, to the blood-vessels, and excretories, a difference from which arises the rareness of inflammation and tumours in this last. It is often a real barrier that stops the affections of the first, a barrier that protects the organ it covers. Thus I have many times observed in opening bodies, that whilst the ordinary texture, in which the arteries are embedded as in the axilla, is in a state of suppuration, and almost disorganized by the pus, that which forms the external covering of the vessels remains untouched; it has not undergone the least alteration. I have seen the same phenomenon in the texture exterior to the urethra in deposits of pus at the loins.