246 STRUCTURE OF THE 



of any change produced by injection, we observe great variety 

 in the size and figure of the lymphatic glands in different bodies, 

 and in different parts of the same body. In some they are 

 large and round, in others small and flat, and in every cluster 

 of these glands this difference in shape and size is observable. 

 Vide Plate VI. 



In females they are generally smaller than in males, and are 

 always considerably less in proportion before the time of pu- 

 berty than after it (cxix). 



SECT. 2 These glands are dispersed in the course of the 

 lymphatic vessels, in different parts of the body, and through 

 them the lymphatic vessels pass. Their various situations 

 have been already so accurately delineated by Mr. Hewson, 1 

 that a repetition would be tedious and unnecessary. 



1 Hewson on the Lymphatic System, Plates i-iv. 



(cxix.) Morgagni, Ruysch, and Haller, according to Mr. Cruikshank, a 

 observed that the lymphatic glands are enlarged in the young animal 

 in proportion to the growth of the body, that they diminish after middle 

 life, and at last entirely vanish. Bichat b states that they are only very 

 remarkable in infancy, becoming less numerous in the adult, and mostly 

 disappearing in old age. I have generally found them proportionally 

 larger in children than in adults, and in the necks of young birds than 

 in their parents ; in old age the lymphatic glands are more or less 

 wasted, and deficient in juice, but they never entirely disappear, and 

 are larger in healthy aged people than in younger subjects wasted by 

 disease. I have seen the glands very distinctly in the neck and groin 

 of a woman aged 95, and of a man aged 87 ; and Dr. Boyd, who 

 undertook, at my request, to make a few observations on the subject, 

 has kindly furnished me with the following results, obtained by weighing 

 the glands of twenty human bodies, dead from various diseases, from 

 birth to 90 years of age : " In adults the lymphatic glands were largest, 

 increasing up to 40 years of age, smaller at 46, and tough and fibrous 

 in the very old. The inguinal glands were larger and more numerous 

 in males than in females. The inguinal and femoral glands were smaller 

 in females aged 50 years and upwards, and emaciated by chronic 

 diseases, than in a female aged 90, whose body was in better condition. 

 In one male, still-born, weighing six pounds, the glands were larger 

 in proportion to the body, than in any other case ; and in a male infant 

 weighing ten pounds, aged eight months, and emaciated by disease, the 

 glands were smaller than in the still-born infant." The thymus gland, 

 as mentioned in Note cxxvn, increases in size for some time after 

 birth, but soon becomes smaller in ill-nourished young animals. 



a Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels, p. b Anatomie Descriptive, toin. iv, p. 431, 

 71, 4to, Loud. 1786. 8vo, Paris, 1803. 



