HOW FAR DOES THE LYMPH NOURISH? 77 



ultimate elements, or into substances composed of those ulti- 

 mate elements in their mineral capacity, under new forms of 

 combination, such as water, carbonic acid, cyanate of ammonia 

 or urea. If this be the kind of death which portions of the 

 living solids undergo when called into activity, that death 

 or disintegration cannot be the source of supply to the lymph- 

 atics, which, besides water and salts, contain only proximate 

 principles of an organic kind, such as. fibrine and albumen. 

 It is to be borne in mind that no organic proximate principle 

 is known to be formed from ultimate elements or their com- 

 pounds in the mineral state within the animal body that 

 the source of such proximate principles is the process of 

 vegetation in vegetable nature. The utmost that can be ac- 

 complished within the animal organism, is the conversion of 

 one proximate principle into another ; for example, the change 

 of starch into sugar, or that of albumen into fibrine. When 

 it is affirmed, then, that the lymph of the lymphatic vessels 

 is derived from the disintegration of the living solids all over 

 the body, under the various living acts in which they are 

 severally concerned, it is assumed that the disintegration 

 referred to is not a disintegration or resolution of proximate 

 organic principles into mineral compounds such as that of 

 albumen and fibrine into water, carbonic acid, and cyanate of 

 ammonia but either a mere loss of vitality, such as takes 

 place in all the living solids under somatic death that is, in 

 the death of the individual or that such disintegration is 

 merely a conversion of certain organic proximate principles 

 into other organic proximate principles, like the assumed con- 

 version of the albumen of the chyle into fibrine, as that fluid 

 ascends higher in the thoracic duct. 



It must be admitted that the ideas here placed in contrast 

 are still of a speculative stamp; but it is nevertheless no 

 waste of time to debate them, for until it is settled on which 



