THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM, 



CHAPTER I. 



A SHORT HISTORY OP THE DISCOVERIES MADE IN TffE 

 LYMPHATIC SYSTEM. 



' < SINCE the days of Asellius, of Rudbeck and of Bartholin, 

 who by their successful inquiries first proved the existence of 

 those vessels in the human body which are now called the 

 Lymphatic System, no part of anatomy has more engaged the 

 attention of its professors; partly from its being the largest 

 field that has lately been opened for their cultivation, and 

 partly from their being so thoroughly persuaded of its great 

 importance. 



Asellius, in the year 1622, reaped the first laurels in this 

 field, by his discoveries of those vessels on the mesentery, 

 which, from their carrying a milk-like fluid, he denominated 

 lacteals. 1 This discovery being made by opening a living dog, 

 anatomists were thence encouraged to make experiments on 

 living animals; and Pecquet, on opening a dog in the year 

 1651, found a -white fluid mixed with the blood in the right 

 auricle of the heart. Suspecting this fluid to be chyle, he 

 endeavoured to determine how it got from the lacteals into 

 the heart; this he found was by means of the ductus thoracicus, 

 which he traced from the lacteals to the subclavian vein, 2 and 

 thus lie clearly proved the existence of that duct which we 

 now consider as the trunk of the system. Just before his time 

 the lacteals had been supposed to terminate in the liver, con- 

 formably to the idea which the physiologists of that period had 



1 Asellius de Lact. 



Pecquet Exp. Nova Anat. fig. 2, in Hemsterhuis Messe Aiirea. 



