Page:A Treatise on the Membranes in General, and on Different Membranes in Particular.djvu/153

MORBID MEMBRANES. 149 be analogous to that of the former? Now has any one ever thought of attributing to compression the formation of external or internal tumors? We ought then to conceive of the production of cysts in the following manner: they begin at first by unfolding and growing in the middle of the cellular organ, by laws very analogous to those of the general growth of the parts of our bodies, and which seem to be aberrations, non-natural applications of those fundamental laws, with which we are not acquainted. When the cyst is once formed, exhalation begins to take place; at first sparingly, then more abundantly, as its progress advances. The enlargement therefore of the exhaling organ always precedes the increase of the fluid exhaled, in the same manner, every thing else being equal, as the quantity of suppuration of a tumor is in direct ratio with its size.

242. This manner of conceiving the formation of cysts, seems to me much more conformable to the laws of nature, than that previously exposed. But it still would remain to determine the precise mechanism of the origin and growth of cysts, and consequently of all tumors. Let us stop where the first causes begin. Do we know the mechanism of the natural increase of our different organs? Why should we wish to divine that of the morbid productions which are unfolded in them, which without doubt, as I have just said, pertain to the same laws? It is a great deal in the organic economy to point out analogies, to show the uniformity of an unknown phenomenon, with another, about which all the world agrees. We should have