Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/66 (page 32)
    ABSORPTION. Lymphatic and lacteal absorption. A systematic work on the lymphatics has been published by Dr. Herbst.* He considers (as M. Bouisson also does, and as Tiedemann ancl others may be said to have considered) that a process of secre¬ tion is combined with that of absorption in the extremities of the vessels. [But the opinion is maintained on very imperfect evidence; for neither of its authors is acquainted with the best accounts of the structure of the villi, or with the phy¬ siology of secretion as an act performed by cells. Some other singular opinions are maintained in this work; but I give only those new results in matters of fact stated to have been obtained from experiments ; and even of these, it is necessary to say, that the evidence, especially that derived from the microscope, is not alto¬ gether satisfactory.!] 1. The coagulability of the lymph is directly proportionate to that of the blood; and is probably due to coagulable matter passing from the latter into the former. 2. Blood-corpuscles are a common constituent of lymph; and their number is greatly and proportionately increased in all cases of unusually active circulation, congestion, or inflammation, whether local or general. In the former case, they pass in abundance into the lymphatics of the congested part. 3. When fluids are injected into the blood-vessels in quantity sufficient to distend them, the in¬ jected substance, (whether blood, milk, water, gelatine, starch, or whatever it may be) may be almost directly afterwards found in the lymphatics. And this same result is obtained, whether the injection be made during life or soon after death; nor is it only the fluid part of that which is injected which passes into the lym¬ phatics; the solid parts also, such as the blood- and milk-corpuscles and the starch- granules, pass unchanged (though in less proportion) into both the lacteals and the lymphatics. Nineteen experiments are related in proof of these statements: the author ascribes the result to a transudation different only in degree from that which is normal. 4. More than twenty experiments are detailed at great length to prove (chiefly by microscopic evidence) that the lympli-corpuscles found of various sizes (from to 1^ of the size of a blood-corpuscle) in the thoracic duct, are not essentially different from those in the true lymphatics and the mesenteric lacteals, nor from those of milk (!) and of chyme formed from fatty substances: (!) and that therefore the various corpuscles of chyme and milk may be considered to be absorbed entire and unaltered by the lacteals of the villi, and to be thence transmitted to the blood, in which they may also be found unaltered. 5. Another large series of experiments is related to prove that co¬ louring matters (chiefly indigo), salts of potash, lead, &c. and starch in imperfect granules, are rapidly absorbed by the lacteals and by the lymphatics of the sto¬ mach. [But there was nothing in the mode of performing them by which it can be explained why their result was different from that obtained by others, who, in similar experiments, have found no absorption of the same substances: they there¬ fore need only be referred to.] 6. Many of the experiments in which the pre¬ ceding conclusions are founded, and some others purposely made, give evidence (as the very first observations by Aselliusj; do), that, for some time after apparent death, the lymph and chyle continue to be moved onwards by the peristaltic move¬ ment of the digestive canal, and by the contraction of the walls of their own vessels; and that also for some time after death, absorption itself is carried on, for considerable quantities of fluids injected into the stomachs of recently-killed animals which had fasted along time, were carried into the thoracic duct. * Das Lymphgefasssystem und seine Verrichtung; Gottingen, 1844. 8vo. t For example, it is often stated that after lymphatic vessels had lain in water till all the colour was taken out of their coats, unaltered blood-corpuscles were found in their contents : these are also so described in lymph diluted with water. i De Lactibus seu Lacteis Venis.