Aldred Scott WartMn 65 



of these glands as occurring in the lower vertebrates. Gibbes' dis- 

 covery of their presence in the human subject, confirmed by Eobertson, 

 the second report of the former and the solitary observation of Vincent 

 represent the sum total of the published work upon the human hemo- 

 lymph glands up to the publication of my article, " A Contribution to 

 the ISTormal Histology and Pathology of the Hemolymph Glands" 

 (Journal of the Bost. Soc. of Med, Sciences, April, 1901). In this 

 paper I made a preliminary report of a study of the human hemolymph 

 glands which has been carried on by me in this laboratory for several 

 years. My attention was first drawn to these glands by certain cases 

 in which some of the retroperitoneal lymph glands appeared to play a 

 part independent of that of the other lymph glands of the body. In 

 its earlier stages the study was confined to the retroperitoneal region, 

 but later systematic investigation was also carried out of the cervical, 

 thoracic and mediastinal glands. The material for this work has been 

 obtained from my autopsy cases of the last 'five years, 94 in all. It was 

 early evident to me that there were two distinct varieties of lymph 

 glands, one containing blood sinuses aud apparently possessing distinct 

 hemal functions. At that time the observations of Gibbes, Eobertson 

 and Vincent were unknown to me so that the essential nature of the 

 glands was also independently discovered by me. 



Since the publication of my article in April of this year there has 

 appeared in the Archiv f. Mikr. Anatomie (July) a paper by Weiden- 

 reich on the "Gefasssystem der Menschlichen Milz," in which he treats 

 theoretically of the hemolymph glands, basing his conclusions upon the 

 work of the English observers. The more important of his theoretical 

 deductions are confirmed by my previously-reported observations. 



The present paper will be devoted to a consideration of the normal 

 histology of human hemolymph glands to a much fuller extent than in 

 my preliminary report. With the exception of a few accident cases 

 none of my autopsy subjects can be said to have been normal. The 

 majority were chronic cases, many of which showed various stages of 

 anemia and cachexia. In so far as I am able to divide the appearances 

 observed by me into histological and pathological such classification is 

 based upon the fact that only in cases showing extensive changes in 

 the blood were conditions found in the hemolymph glands that could 

 be regarded as being essentially pathological. In all other cases the 

 structure of the glands was assumed to be histological because of their 

 identity of structure with the glands found in normal individuals killed 

 by accident, the general similarity of structure in all cases except certain 

 blood cases, and finally their resemblance to the hemolymph glands of 



