289. 



Provisional Report on the Communication between the Arteries 

 and Absorbents on the part of the London Committee. By 



Dr. HoDGKIN. 



Dr. Hodgkin read to the Medical Section a provisional Report 

 on behalf of the London Committee appointed to investigate the 

 communications between the arteries and absorbents. As the 

 Committee is continued to pursue the inquiry, the author has 

 not transmitted the Report for publication in the present volume. 

 The following are the outlines of the Report. 



The Committee had added to its number Mr. Francis Sibson, 

 jun.j an expert and practised anatomist then engaged at Guy's 

 Hospital, where it was found most convenient for the inquiry to be 

 conducted. Numerous examinations were made of the lacteals 

 in man and other animals, in which these vessels were either 

 filled with chyle, or artificially injected with mercury, but no 

 positive instance of a lacteal communicating with the veins was 

 discovered. Two instances were mentioned in which an efferent 

 vessel from a mesentei'ic gland entered a large vein, but there 

 was reason to suspect that the vessels, which appeared to be- 

 long to the lymphatic system, were really veins. The commu- 

 nication between the absorbents and veins in the substance of the 

 mesenteric glands was confirmed in numerous instances, and un- 

 der circumstances which induced the reporter to believe that no 

 rupture or extravasation had taken place. Although the views 

 of Professor Lippi had not been confirmed by the examiners, 

 the reporter did not conclude that they were to be whoUy rejected, 

 and the thoracic duct and right trunk regarded as the sole com- 

 munications between the absorbent and venous systems, since nu- 

 merous anatomists had seen and described other instances of ab- 

 sorbents entering veins. He had himself seen the absorbents from 

 a lung entering the vena azygos, and his friend Mr. Bi-acy Clark 

 had found the receptaculum chyli emptying itself into a lumbar 

 vein. He was inclined to believe that such communications oc- 

 curred as anomalies and variations analogous to other varieties in 

 the distribution of vessels. This view derived some support from 

 the fact that such communications occurred chiefly in or near the 

 neck, and in the pelvis, where they resembled the normal distribu- 

 tion observed in birds and reptiles. There was then an analogy be- 

 tween these irregularities of the absorbent system, and the most 

 frequent varieties in the arterial, which also, for the most part, 

 resemble the normal distribution in some of the inferior animals. 

 It did not appear that Lippi was able to demonstrate the com- 

 voL. v.— 1836. • u 



