Safeguards against Disease 147 



replaced, and there is everywhere more or less 

 wear and tear. Now in all these changes 

 there is first and last a good deal of dead stuff 

 to be disposed of. 



|:. ; While other cells here and there lend a hand 

 in this scavenger work, it is the leucocytes 

 which bear the brunt of it, and it is in truth 

 a busy life they lead. Fragments of dead 

 cells or tissue (Plate XI., 4), particles of foreign 

 material which accidentally may have got into 

 the tissues, they engulf (Plate XI., 2). Some 

 of these they sooner or later digest and thus 

 dispose of, or if this be not feasible, they carry 

 them off to safe places of deposit within the 

 body. The regular leucocyte dumping grounds 

 of our busy interiors are the so-called lymph- 

 glands or lymph-nodes, of which we have 

 many snugly stored in appropriate places 

 in the neck, the armpit, the groin, at the root 

 of the lungs, and within the abdomen. 



Here various types of scavenger cells fore- 

 gather and work over their never ending 

 supply of booty from the farthest recesses of 

 the body. If through the subtle chemistry 

 of their own juices they can convert the stuff 



