Volume 1
A system of human anatomy : including its medical and surgical relations / by Harrison Allen. With a section on histology. By E.O. Shakespeare.
- Harrison Allen
- Date:
- 1882-1884
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A system of human anatomy : including its medical and surgical relations / by Harrison Allen. With a section on histology. By E.O. Shakespeare. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![HISTOLOGY. LYMPH. OF all the tissues of the human frame, perhaps the lymph is the most important; it is certainly one of the most extensive. Possessing a volume nearly one-third that of the entire body, it surrounds every constituent of the connective framework, and is in close contact with the elementary parts of all organs. It is the ever-present medium of transportation from the highways of the blood to the cell-elements of the body, of the pabulum necessary to their life and func- tion ; it is the common carrier of the products both of elaboration and of waste of the great connective-tissue system ; and it is the perennial stream, through whose agency the depuration of the blood, during its course in the capillaries, is balanced by a complementary accession. The morphology of the lymph is all that concerns us in this place. Viewed from this standpoint, the lymph is one of the simplest tissues studied under the microscope; and it is for this reason that we have chosen to begin with. it. Under a high magnifying power, lymph is seen to consist, when freshly examined, of numbers of form- elements, imbedded usually in a clear, colorless, trans- parent, structureless substance of a fluid consistence (the lymph-plasma). These form-elements may readily change their relative positions in the surrounding medium, by means of currents in the latter, or by means of an individual power of locomotion which seems to be inherent in some. In structure, shape, and dimensions, these forms differ much among them- selves, particularly in the warm-blooded animals; and their number in a given volume of the fluid medium, in which they are loosely suspended, varies greatly in diiferent parts of the lymphatic system, according to the many circumstances which influence the density and chemical constitution of the lymph-plasma, as well as the activity of the form-elements themselves. The great majority of these elements do not differ so much in the general plan of their construction, as in the proportions of their constituent parts. Before speaking particularly of this, however, it should be well understood, that in every collection of lymph there are present in the plasma forms in widely vary- ing numbers representing three general classes of elements: (a) minute granules; (/;) cells consisting of one or more nuclei, and a proto])lasmic body; (c) forms more or less closely resembling red blood- corpuscles. a. Alinvte (jranules.—There are always present in every 0.03937 cubic inch of the lymph numbers of particles, which, under a magnifying power of 600 or 600 diameters, present the form of very minute gran- ules; they are somewhat spherical (sometimes angu- lar), have a gray, opalescent appearance, and are in a state of constant agitation—thus exhibiting the so- called Brovmian movement. It is the presence of these elementary particles in vast numbers which gives rise to the opalescence of chyle. A more detailed de- scription of them will be given when the constitution of chyle is discussed. In the lymph their number varies greatly in different parts of the lymphatic system ; it varies also from one time to another in collections made at the same point. h. Lymph-corpuscles.—The characteristic form-ele- ment of the lymph is the so-called lyrnpjh-corpmscle^ variously termed leucocyte, white-corpuscle, or wan- dering-cell. Rize.—The lymph-corpuscles vary much in dimen- sions. Inwarm-blooded animals their diameter ranges, in the thoracic duct, from j-oVi) yuVo inch, while, in the lymph of the peritoneum, the size of ( 9.R ^](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21506607_0001_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
