Collections of matter are very frequently met with in the axilla. These occur either about inflamed glands, or in the cellular tissue connected with these glands, or they may have found their way into this region, their focus being somewhere else. The abundance of cel lular membrane here, its vascularity, its in cessant movements, and the dragging and stretching to which it is exposed, render it very liable to formations of pus. Irritation of the delicate integuments may occasion them, and they may be formed in the neck and pass into this region through the opening at its apex. The looseness of the texture is such as to allow suppurations to go on to a great extent, whilst the movement of the walls pre disposes to their termination in sinuses.
The absorbent glands, however, are the or gans which most frequently take on disease in this place. These may become inflamed and enlarged from sympathy with disease or injury in any part of the corresponding limb, the back, the surface of the thorax, or the upper part of the abdomen. When inflamed, they often run on to suppuration, or resolution may follow on the removal of the exciting cause. Slight lesions of the skin of the parts men tioned may determine the formation of ab scesses, as a scratch on the finger, a blister on the chest, &c. Paronychia is not an unusual
exciting cause.
Formidable inflammations of these glands, often attended with fatal consequences, follow the absorption of poisons. The cases most familiar to us in this country arise from wounds received in dissecting. The glands seem to arrest the poison in its progress to the circu lation. They become excited and congested. The cellular tissue surrounding, imbedding, and partly forming them, inflames ; a puffy swelling marks the effusion of serum into the cellular membrane, which may or may not be followed by suppuration.
The glands frequently take on the disease under which the neighbouring mamma labours, as cancer, fungus lmmatodes, &c. These must be removed if the breast be amputated. They are generally in the course of the external mammary artery, and no other vessel is in terested in their removal, yet the looseness of the tissue in which they lie renders it unsafe to cut the little vessels derived from this incon siderable artery. Surgeons usually twist or tear away the glands, or else apply a ligature to the vessel before they cut it.