on his arm or leg; in course of time the blood
which had flowed from the ruptured vessels, and had formed a big bruise,
is absorbed, and all is as before the injury was inflicted. If more
serious damage has been done, the fibres of some muscles may have been
torn, even though the skin remains unbroken. Inflammation is set up, the
injured parts die, and are melted down into the matter of an abscess.
The abscess discharges itself, its walls contract, the opposite surfaces
come into contact, and are welded together again, so that there is no
loss of substance, nor anything save a scar on the surface to indicate
what has happened.

In the case of the deposits of consumption or scrofula these changes
cannot take place. In technical language the matter is said to be
incapable of organisation; that is to say, it cannot be transformed by
nature's alchemy into anything good or useful. It is rubbish to be got
rid of; and the patient's recovery depends on the possibility of getting
rid of it. If there is much of it, so as to be removed from the
vivifying influence which adjacent living structures still maintain
about it, the deposit softens at its centre. This softening gradually
extends to the circumference; the mass irritates more and more the parts
around it, and where the irritation is greatest the structures yield,
and are removed to make a way for its escape, and the patient spits up
the contents of the abscess.

But the abscess of the lungs is not like an abscess which follows an
injury. It has not formed in the midst of previously healthy parts which
are capable of reproducing the original structure; its walls are
themselves involved in the disease, and, in accordance with the rule I
have already mentioned, 'much will have more,' and the patient goes on
spitting up the perpetually renewed contents of the abscess for months
or years; until by its gradually increasing size, and the more and more
abundant discharge of matter, and further and further destruction of
lung-substance, death takes place.

This fatal issue, however, is not invariable. In favourable
circumstances, and especially in childhood, the radical constitutional
defect may be amended, and with a healthier condition of the blood the
unhealthy deposit may cease to take place. The lung-substance, however,
with all its curious structure of air-cells and their network of minute
vessels where, as in nature's laboratory, the blood receives its due
supply of oxygen