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3. By producing Catharsis, and thereby increasing the action of the Exhalants directly, and that of the absorbents indirectly.
It has been already stated, under the consideration of Cathartics, that certain medicines of that class excite the exhalants of the alimentary canal, and occasion a very copious discharge of serous matter: by this operation the blood is deprived of a large portion of water, and the absorbents are thus indirectly stimulated to supply the deficiency; Elaterium, and some other hydragogue cathartics, may be thus employed with extraordinary success for the cure of certain forms of Dropsy, where the vital powers of the patient can sustain the violence of the remedy;—in the whole circle of medicinal operations there is nothing more wonderful than this, that an impression made on the internal surface of the primæ viæ, by a few particles of matter, should thus convey by magic as it were, an impulse to the most remote extremities, rousing their absorbents to action; and, in case of œdema there, awakening the sleeping energies of these vessels, which like millions of pumps at work, transmit the morbid fluid to the intestines and urinary passages, effecting a detumescence of the hydropic limbs in the course of a few hours, and thus affording a striking illustration of the sympathetic action of medicines, and an instructive example of the operation of those of the sorbefacient class.[160]