20 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



as a fluid constituent part of its corpuscular element. 

 After osmotic departure from the blood vasculature, it 

 enters the matrix of the disintegrating and vacuolated 

 tissues to become assimilated by these tissue elements so far 

 as their wants require, its unselected or unused residuum 

 passing on in rear of, or blending with, the released or 

 worn-out chemico-physiological constituents of those 

 tissues, to find localised re-admission into the blood with 

 the constituents of the thoracic duct, as the lymph proper. 

 The lymph proper, or haemal lymph, after occupying every 

 tissue space and inter-space of the extra-vascular regions 

 of the structures and organs of the body generally, apart 

 from those of the systemic nervous system, is collected 

 from these spaces and inter-spaces by the lymphatic vascu- 

 lature proper, passed through lymphatic glands, where it 

 is re-elaborated and, ultimately, returned into the blood 

 for further use in the economy, or for elimination as effete 

 and noxious excretion. Besides the haemal lymph, which 

 is entirely concerned in processes connected with the 

 economy and phenomena of haemogenesis and sympathetic 

 nutrition, or metabolism, another form of lymph is elabor- 

 ated from the blood circulation, where and when it deposits 

 the glial elements of the neuroglia amid the fibro-cellular 

 basis, or matrix, of that structure, and where and when, in 

 depositing that neuro-basal substance, it releases a greater 

 or lesser proportion of its liquor sanguinis to become the 

 neural lymph or cerebro-spinal fluid. The functional role 

 of this lymph, or fluid, being elsewhere treated in some 

 detail, we content ourselves here with merely bespeaking 

 a continued remembrance of its clinical bearings in all 

 diseased conditions involving the systemic nervous system 

 and those organs and structures related in any way to it 

 by continuity of histological development and evolution 

 as well as innervation. Lymph thus, from its ubiquity, 

 becomes the fluid in which and through which all the vital 

 and organic activities of the body are conducted in which 

 respect it may be compared with oxygen in the universal 

 chemical processes of metabolism, or with the sympathetic 

 nervature in its relation to the continuous or never-ending 

 propagation and maintenance of life and life forms in all 

 their phases and varieties. 



