On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis.
- Robert Willis
- Date:
- 1867
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
27/86 page 17
![question now put is this :—the exuded fluids return into the veins by heterogeneous attraction or endosmosis. And this is true. But the condition on which endosmosis depends in the sense in which that remarkable phenomenon is usually under- stood, is the mediate contact of fluids having different quali- ties, or different densities. No means, however, have j^etbeen assigned by physiologists for securing different degrees of density between the contents of the efferent and those of the afferent vessels,—for effecting a greater degree of density in the returning than in the outgoing current of the circulating fluid. Now this means I find in the action of the sudoriparous system, the end and import of which I regard as sub- servient TO SECURING THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO THE RETURN INTO THE VENOUS CIRCULATION OF THE FI.UIDS THAT HAVE BEEN SHED FROM THE ARTERIES FOR THE PURPOSES OF NUTRITION AND VITAL ENDOWMENT. “Water,'’’ says Berzelius, “is the principal matter thrown off by the skin,” a truth which is abundantly testified to in the analyses that have been made of the sweat by different chemists. Berzelius himself estimates the secretion to be composed of 99'5 per cent, of water and but G'5 per cent, of solid matter,—matter which may be regarded as entirely ad- ventitious, for it consists of the epithelial scales that are con- stantly being thrown off from the surface of the body, of the fatty product of the sebaceous follicles, and of simple saline ingredients. Later analyses do not differ essentially from this estimate of the great Swedish chemist. Anselmino gives from 5' to 12‘0 in 1000 ]iarts as the proportion of the solids to the fluid of the sweat. M. Favre assigns a still smaller relative proportion of solid to liquid matter, viz. 4‘43 of solid to 1000 of liquid. Schotten raises the solids to 22‘4 per 1000 parts, 12 of these being found to consist of the mere exuviae of the skin. AVe are safe in concluding, therefore, that the proportion of the solid matter to the fluid of the sweat is present in no higher a ratio than about one to the hundred parts : 99 per cent, is pure water, one per cent, is solid matter, and consists of com-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21309553_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
