LYMHI. 75 



* 



out of the albumen or albuminoid matter which chyle in its 

 earliest form contains. 



The chyle-corpuscles are conceived to be the early stage of 

 the red corpuscles of the blood. They are circular, and nearly 

 spherical in figure about 1 -250th of an inch in diameter, and 

 with a tuberculated surface. They appear to be nucleated 

 cells, the nuclei of which are soft granular or tuberculated 

 masses filling the cavities of the cells. These chyle-corpuscles 

 do not differ from the lymph-corpuscles and the white cor- 

 puscles of the blood. And it begins now to be a prevailing 

 opinion that these corpuscles, the rudiments of the red cor- 

 puscles of the blood, are chiefly derived from the conglobate or 

 absorbent glands (the same which are now called lacteal and 

 lymphatic ganglia). Moreover, it seems not unlikely that the 

 spleen joins in this office, and that lymph or chyle corpuscles 

 issue from the spleen, not by the veins, but by the lymphatic 

 vessels of that organ. The fibrine of the chyle, according to 

 some authorities, is also elaborated in the same glands. 



Lympli. It thus appears that the lymph of the lymphatic 

 vessels concurs with the chyle in the renovation of the blood. 

 What, then, is the source of the lymph ? The answer to this 

 question is hardly agreed upon among physiologists. The 

 lymph agrees very closely in composition with the blood, with 

 the exception of the red corpuscles. The blood is usually con- 

 sidered at present as consisting of two principal parts, namely, 

 the liquor sanguinis, or blood-plasma, and the red corpuscles. 

 Now the lymph corresponds very closely in composition with 

 the blood-plasma. Both consist of fibrine, albumen, white 

 corpuscles, and saline substances. But in the process of nu- 

 trition, the blood-plasma is believed to exude from the capil- 

 lary network of blood-vessels, while the adjacent tissues 

 standing in need of repair absorb from this liquor sanguinis, 

 or blood-plasma, the materials of which they stand in need. 



