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.

    33/66 (page 33)
    A few facts not generally, if at all, hitherto known, are also recorded in the Studies on the Chyle, by M. Bouisson.* 1. When a few drops of sulphuric acid are added to the chyle of any animal, the same kind of odour is emitted as when the blood of the same animal is similarly treated: an odour, which as M. Barruel showed of the blood, and M. Couerbe of many secretions, is peculiar in each of many animals. [The fact, as M. Bouisson states, had already been observed by Vauquelin.] 2. Chyle, like blood, will often remain for a long time in its vessels without coagulating, but will coagulate rapidly on being removed from them. In one case it was fluid in a man twenty-four hours after death, but soon coagulated after its escape from the vessels. 3. The chyle-globules in the thoracic duct are, as Wagner has described them, lenticular. 4. Some experi¬ ments, apparently not very carefully performed, showed that milk injected into a dog’s rectum (after purging and abstinence) was coagulated, acquired an acid reaction, and was nearly all absorbed by the lymphatics. 5. In rabbits fed for a short time with madder mixed in their food, no tinge of red is communicated to the chyle, even though the serum may be red; but if the same diet be continued till the colouring matter has thoroughly impregnated the blood, and is mixed with the urine and other secretions, it is imparted to the lymph and, thence, in¬ directly to the chyle. Calculating from the analyses of Tiedemann and Gmelin, which showed a far larger proportion of fatty matter in the chyle of the recently fed, than in that of the fasting, horse, and a proportionally smaller quantity of albumen, Mr. Rossf has adduced further evidence for the view (assigned in the last Report to MM. Sandras and Bouchardat,) that the lacteals absorb none of the usual solid matters of the chyle, except the fatty matters ; and that the proportion of solid matter in the chyle of the thoracic duct being less than that in the lacteal vessels is due to the chyle of the latter being diluted by mixture with the contents of the lym¬ phatics. The other constituents of the chyle he considers to be absorbed by the roots of the portal vein, by which they are carried to the liver, and he believes that the observation of Tiedemann, respecting the apparent absence of fatty mat¬ ter in the chyle when the bile-duct is tied, proves that the lacteals obtain oily matter, not from the chyle alone, but also and chiefly from the subtances secreted by the liver. He calculates from formulae, that the bilic acid may be decomposed into an oily matter and an azotized substance which may assist to form proteine- compounds. Lymphatic hearts. By Professor StanniusJ the full discovery has been made of the existence of lymphatic hearts in birds, analogous to those in reptiles. He has found them already in the stork, ostrich, cassowary, goose, swan, diver, and hawk ; and in all,with the exception of the last two, has found the walls of the heart formed by transversely striated muscular fibres. In the ostrich and cassowary these fibres form a layer from half a line to a line in thickness: in the natatores it cannot be discerned with the naked eye, but can (though, in some, still very sparingly) with the aid of the microscope. It is the existence of these fibres which gives to these organs (already de¬ scribed as lymph-vesicles by Panizza) the right to be considered hearts. Their positions and connexions vary much indifferent birds. In all, several lymphatic vessels open into the cavity of the heart, and a vein proceeds from it which passes under the os ilii and joins the vena cava inferior. Lymph only has been seen in them, and they always have valves which prevent the passage of the lymph back¬ wards into its vessels, and that of the blood from the vein into the lymphatic heart. In the swan and goose, in which alone these hearts have been observed during life, no active independent motion of their walls has yet been clearly seen, though there has been an appearance of a slow approximation of their walls, expelling their contents. * Gazette Medicate, 1844, 29 Juin, 6 Juillet, 3 et 17 A6ut, &c. t Lancet, Feb. 10 and 17, 1844.