FUNCTIONS OF SPLEEN. 331 



to serve for the storing up of materials which, being reabsorbed 

 in the inactivity of the hibernating period, may maintain the 

 respiration and the temperature of the body in the reduced 

 state to which they fall during that time. 



With respect to the office of the spleen, we have somewhat 

 more definite information. In the first place, the large size 

 which it gradually acquires towards the termination of the 

 digestive process, and the great increase observed about this 

 period in the amount of the finely-granular albuminous plasma 

 within its parenchyma, and the subsequent gradual decrease 

 of this material, seem to indicate that this organ is concerned 

 in elaborating the albuminous or formative materials of food, 

 and for a time storing them up, to be gradually introduced 

 iiito the blood, according to the demands of the general system. 

 The small amount of fatty matter in such plasma, leads to the 

 inference that the gland has little to do in regard to the prepa- 

 ration of material for the respiratory process. 



Then again, it seems not improbable that, as Hewson origi- 

 nally suggested, the spleen, and perhaps to some extent the 

 other vascular glands, are, like the lymphatic glands, engaged 

 in the formation of the germs of subsequent blood-corpuscles. 

 For it seems quite certain, that the blood of the splenic vein 

 contains an unusually large amount of white corpuscles ; and 

 in the disease termed leucocythsemia, in which the pale cor- 

 puscles of the blood are remarkably increased in number, 

 there is almost always found an hypertrophied state of the 

 spleen or thyroid body, or some of the lymphatic glands. 

 Accordingly there seems to be a close analogy in function be- 

 tween the so-called vascular and the lymphatic glands : the 

 former elaborating albuminous principles, and forming the 

 germs of new blood-corpuscles out of alimentary materials 

 absorbed by the bloodvessels ; the latter discharging the like 

 office on nutritive materials taken up by the general absorbent 

 system. In Kolliker's opinion, the development of colorless 

 and also colored corpuscles of the blood is one of the essential 

 functions of the spleen, into the veins of which the new-formed 

 corpuscles pass, and are thus conveyed into the general cur- 

 rent of the circulation. 



There is reason to believe, too, that in the spleen many of 

 the red corpuscles of the blood, those probably which have 

 discharged their office and are worn out, undergo disintegra- 

 tion ; for in the colored portion of the spleen-pulp an abun- 

 dance of such corpuscles, in various stages of degeneration, 

 are found, while the red corpuscles in the splenic venous blood 

 are said to be relatively diminished. According to Kolliker's 

 description of this process of disintegration, the blood-corpus- 



