64 STUDIES IN ADVANCED PHYSIOLOGY. 



actually containing bits of muscle and nerve of the disin- 

 tegrated organ. Being thus able to wander up and down 

 the avenues of the body, in, between, and through the tis* 

 sues, they have been called wandering cells. For this 

 reason these corpuscles are not at all confined to the 

 blood, but occur with a similar frequency in lymph, in the 

 marrow of bones, and probably the so-called connective 

 tissue corpuscles are but slightly differentiated white cor- 

 puscles. Their migration in the formation of pus has been 

 mentioned in a preceding chapter. 



It seems probable that these corpuscles are instrumental 

 in absorbing the fat from the intestines by mechanically 

 carrying it from the villi into the lacteals, while the fat cir- 

 culating in the body which is not needed by the tissues is 

 carried by such corpuscles and stored away in different 

 parts forming adipose tissue. Such fat-eating cells, some- 

 times called plasma cells, may become so distended with 

 fat that the cell body is reduced to a slight envelope sur- 

 rounding the huge fat globule. White corpuscles possess the 

 power to multiply by the process of ordinary cell division. 

 This may occur any place in the body, e. g. in the blood, 

 but more regularly occurs in what are known as lymphatic 

 glands . 



Lymphatic glands are not glands in any true sense of 

 that term, but are large aggregations of white corpuscles 

 housed in a capsule of connective tissue. The fact that 

 through such capsules lymphatic vessels flow, has given 

 them the name of lymphatic glands. In these glands the 

 cells grow and divide, and by the lymph stream circulating 

 through it the additions are carried out into the body. Such 

 lymphatic glands are familiar to us as -the tonsils, the thy- 

 mus gland, the patches of Peyer, and numerous little lym- 

 phatic nodules distributed all over the body. In the spleen, 

 too, these corpuscles seem to be formed in an analagous 

 way. 



The fate of these corpuscles is difficult to determine in 

 all cases. There is reason to believe that in addition to the 



