LYMPHATIC SYSTEM; iss 



sanguius ou dans les veines, il y en a dans toutes les parties 

 du corps, ils repompent la matiere lymphatique qui s'evacue 

 par les arteres, on peut les nommer conduits absorbans;" and 

 again, in another place, he says, " ils reyoivent la lymphe sub- 

 tile qui se repand sur la surface de toutes les parties, et dans 

 les differentes cavites du corps, ils la reportent au sang." ] 



Hambergerus also seems to have had this idea of their office, 

 for he says, " ex omnis generis cavo, humidum liquidum ve- 

 hente, sive sit arteria, sive vas secernens, vel excretorium, vel 

 aliis usibus destinatum, vasa lymphatica oriuntur." 2 



Frederic Hoffman has been still more explicit on this sub- 

 ject, and has expressed the doctrine of the lymphatics being 

 absorbents very completely, in his Medic. Ration. System, 

 lib. 1, sect. 2, cap. 3, where he says 



" 2. Duplex est origo vasorum lymphaticorum, quaedam 

 ex ipsis arteriis prodeunt, alia ex porosa et cellulosa partium 

 substantia nascuntur. 



" 4. Lymphatica, quse ex partium substantia oriuntur, 

 aquosi succi nutritii partem resorbent, ac revehunt ad cor. 



" 7. Revehunt vero omnia lymphatica ex universe cor- 

 pore lympham suam ad capsulam lumbarem et chyliferum due- 

 turn, in quam se exonerant. 



" 11. Ad facilitandum lymphae regressum vasa hsec val- 

 vulis instructa sunt, et quidem sigmoideis, numerosioribus et 

 angustioribus, quse quidem lympham libere transmittunt, impe- 

 diant tamen quo minus regurgitet." 



This opinion of the lymphatics being a system of absorbents 

 has been adopted and supported with additional arguments, 

 first by Dr. Hunter (LXXXIV), and afterwards by Dr. Monro, 



1 Anatomic de THornine, 2d edit. cap. viii. 2 Physiol. Med. $ 469. 



(LXXXIV.) The following passage is interesting, as showing the state 

 even of Dr. Hunter's knowledge concerning the office of the absorbents 

 and some of the properties of the blood, in the year 1757. Speaking 

 of the erosion of the sternum and vertebrae in a case of aneurism of 

 the aorta, he says : " The appearance was rather as if the blood had 

 insensibly dissolved away the substance of the bone, making the 

 greatest havoc in the softest parts of the bone, as we see in stones of 

 unequal texture that have been long washed by a dropping, or stream 

 of water. Has the blood that property which some have ascribed to 

 it of dissolving bony matter ? A surgeon of my acquaintance, whose 



