It follows from all these considerations, that the exhaled fluids, as the fat, the serum, the synovia, the marrow, &c. differ essentially from the secreted fluids, as the bile, the urine, the saliva, the mucous, prostate, spermatic, pancreatic fluids, &c. This difference appears to have struck a great number of authors; yet most of them have made use of the term secretion to express the separation of the exhaled fluids from the mass of blood. I think that there is much analogy between exhalation and secretion. In both, there is the capillary system, as I have said, between the vessel that brings and that which carries away; but the capillary system is certainly arranged very differently in a gland, from what it is in a serous surface; for example, wherever there is exhalation, there is certainly nothing but the capillary system; but where there is secretion, the secretory organ is too considerable not to admit of something more. Besides, by trusting to inspection, and without wishing to examine the intimate nature of the organs, it is evident that where there is secretion, there is a gland, and that this gland is wanting where there is exhalation.
ARTICLE FIRST.
GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE EXHALANTS.
I. Origin, course, and termination.
Authors have formed very different ideas concerning the exhalants. We know the decreasing vessels of Boerhaave, and the error loci for which his imagination created these vessels. Lately all the white vessels continuous with the arteries have been rejected, and in order to explain exhalation, recourse has been had only to inorganic pores in the arterial parietes, through which the fluids transude upon the organs. Frequent observation of similar transudations upon the dead body, as those of the bile through the gall-bladder, of the marrow through the osseous texture which it discolours, &c. is one of the great supports of this method of explaining the exhalant system. But we have already many times observed, that these phenomena never take place during life, when the organic sensibility of the parts refuses to produce them. Besides, exhalation is evidently subjected to the influence of the vital forces, since it varies continually in a part, according as the vital forces of the part themselves vary. Moreover, if the exhaled fluids escaped through inorganic pores, it would be necessary that not only the vascular parietes, but also those of the serous surfaces which receive these fluids, should be perforated with small holes; why then would not these fluids, of which these surfaces are the reservoirs, transude into the neighbouring cellular texture? Let us reject then every opinion that disregards anatomical observation, and let us endeavour by this observation to ascertain what the exhalants are.
It is undoubtedly difficult to form a precise idea of these vessels, their extreme tenuity constantly conceals them from us in a natural state. Yet by the aid of experiments and accurate reasoning, it appears to me that we may come at some degree of accuracy.
We have seen that the existence of a capillary system terminating the arteries, is in the parts where exhalation takes place as in the others, a thing incontestably proved by experiment with injections, by inflammations which arise spontaneously, and by those that are produced at will; so that a serous, cutaneous surface, &c. on which nothing appears, is covered with an infinity of little vessels suddenly in the first case, and at the end of a longer or shorter time in the second.
If the injection is not pushed very far, it is confined to the capillary system; but if it succeeds, it pours from all parts upon the surface, where exhalation takes place in the ordinary state. This dew mechanically produced, evidently resembles that which the tonic force of the parts occasions during life; for, as I have said, if it was a transudation, there would be extravasation in the neighbouring textures, whereas nothing is filled from the syringe which propels the injection to the exhalants that pour it out, except the arteries, the capillaries and these exhalants. Besides, when there is active hemorrhage, the capillaries from which arise the exhalants that pour out the blood, are evidently more full of fluid than ordinary, as I have already remarked.
From these considerations and many others that will be explained hereafter in this system, I think that we may consider the exhalants as arising from the capillary system, by means of which they are continued with the arteries, which bring them the materials of exhalation.
But to say what is the length of these vessels, what their form, what course they run, is evidently impossible; it is here that the imaginary descriptions begin. We distinguish with difficulty their orifices. We see upon the skin many little pores that evidently form communications from within to without; but these pores transmit not only the exhalants, but also the absorbents, the hair, &c. as we shall see in the dermoid system. 1st. The existence of the exhalants; 2d, their origin in the capillary system of the part where they are found; 3d, their termination upon different surfaces, are upon the whole all that is accurately known.