106 APPENDIX. 



valves than in man." 1 Now I will take upon me to say, 

 there is nothing in this note which proves whether he had in- 

 flated a lacteal or a vein. For what he says of the situation of 

 the vessels, and of his blowing up the heart, is equivocal : the 

 only part of the note which appears to characterize the lacteals, 

 is in reality a mistake ; that is, where he says they have valves. 

 But the lacteals on the mesentery of a skate have no valves, 

 and injections pass readily from the large to the smaller 

 branches. And what is even more to the purpose, although it 

 appears, from his calling what he saw lacteals and lymphatics, 

 that he had at that time some suspicions about them. Yet I 

 am persuaded he has since changed his opinion; and this I 

 think is evident, even from the manner in which he speaks of 

 his experiments made the year after. For, says he, " I have 

 dissected this year (1761, in summer) eight skates, and about 

 a like number of cods and codlings, but without being able 

 to observe by dissection, or to inflate any like to lacteal or 

 lymphatic glands I find indeed (he adds), that blowing back- 

 wards in the meseraic veins, the intestines and the cellular 

 substance between their coats are inflated ; but this is no 

 direct proof of branches of red veins absorbing, as these veins 

 may be burst, or the air may have first entered the arteries." 3 

 Now this surely is not the language of a man who had seen 

 the lacteals, but of one that was seeking for them. Had he 

 found them, he certainly would have mentioned it in this note, 

 but he avoids the subject entirely, and only says he could not 

 find the glands, thereby leaving us to suppose that these dissec- 

 tions were made for the glands only, after having discovered 

 the vessels ; which is highly improbable, since, by his own 

 confession, 8 he did not inject the vessels, which he knows well 

 enough is the best way of determining whether the glands 

 exist or not ; and one experiment in this way would have been 

 more satisfactory than his eight, or than eight hundred made 

 by dissection only. 4 Add to this, he would not, I think, if he 



1 See State of Facts, p. 12. 2 Ibid. p. 12. 3 See his claim above, p. 96. 



4 If the reader should happen not to be well acquainted with this part of anatomy, 

 he may not see all the force of this argument, which will be satisfactory to anato- 

 mists ; for it is a fact admitted amongst them, that the mesenteric glands are placed 

 only in the course of the lacteals, so that the lacteals must pass through these glands 

 in their way to the heart. The readiest method therefore of discovering the glands > 

 after having seen the vessels, is by injecting those vessels ; for the injection, in its 



