ABSORBENTS. In veterinary practice medi cines given internally to neutralize the action of acids found in the stomach or bowels. Prepared chalk, carbonate of soda, etc., are absorbents. Externally absorbents are agents applied for ab sorbing the moisture of galls, or to prevent fric tion between folds of the skin. Calamine, flour, starch and other agents of a drying nature, or those for drying up sores, blisters or grease, are absorbents. They are useful in all mild cases where the system has not become imbued with virus. In physiology absorbents are a class of vessels whose office it is to convey the product of digestion, the nutrition, into the circulation, to be deposited as flesh, fat, bone, and other necessary portions of the animal body, to build up the sys tem and repair waste. They are divided into lacteals and lymphatics. The lacteals are situ ated in the cavity of the abdomen; their minute mouths, opening on the inner surface of the stomach and intestines, suck up the nutritious portion of the food eaten, and carry it to a canal: emptying into the left jugular vein. The lym
phatics, on the other hand, are distributed over every portion of the animal frame. They re move the residue of nutrition. When the supply of food is deficient, the lymphatics remove from those portions of the body such material as can be spared, to be converted into blood. They empty their contents into the same vein as the lacteals, and in their distribution through the body follow the course of the veins. In plant life the leaves are absorbents to a slight degree, but the true absorbents are the minute, sponge like extremities of the roots (8pongio/Ta), whose office it is to suck up the fluid nutrition of plants from the soil in which they are rooted.