ORGANIC ELEMENTS 21 



Lymph being thus a general term for the fluid basis of 

 all the organic fluids, primary and secondary, original and 

 derived, circulating within the body, from the elaborated 

 chyme, and chyle, succeeding the digestive processes of the 

 alimentary canal, to the excretionary fluids proper, and the 

 effete products of organic waste, as they are floated out of 

 the body, is applicable, as a descriptive appellation, with 

 truth to all forms of haemal, as well as neural, fluids, and, 

 therefore, that it constitutes a bond of union or continuity 

 between all the circulatory disposals and organic processes 

 involved in development, growth and decay, integration, 

 disintegration, life and death of tissue, organ, and organ- 

 ism. The aqueous or fluid portion of the ingesta thus 

 becomes the basis of the lymph and lymphoid fluids, and 

 the medium in which the solid portion of them is dissolved 

 and held in solution and suspension preparatory to circu- 

 latory disposal to the various tissues requiring nutrition. 

 Thus loaded, it may be said to carry the nutritive elements 

 to the tissues and to deliver them piecemeal as the nutritive 

 necessities of these tissues require, in atomic, molecular, 

 or larger proportions to meet their various wants, leaving 

 them where required ; and then, taking up the used-up and 

 effete materials which functional activity has discharged, 

 and whose removal is essential to maintain the condition 

 of physiological purity and health, it delivers them into 

 the lymphatic vasculature, to be further dealt with by it 

 before being returned into the blood stream. 



Thus alone is it possible for the hygienic circulation of 

 nutritive pabulum to be effected, and the work of material 

 change and exchange to be accomplished within the matrix 

 of the various textures of which the human and higher 

 animal bodies are composed, and thus alone is it possible 

 for the vis medicatrix naturae to be an effective agency in 

 each such economy. Lymph thus becomes the fluid by 

 whose circulatory movements the nutritive materials of 

 the ingesta are conveyed to the tissues, and the refuse 

 materials of the egesta are conveyed from the tissues, the 

 one process of conveyance balancing the other, and both 

 constituting a circulatory process of conveyance of un- 

 broken continuity throughout the thoroughfares of the 

 body ; the intricacies of the trophic changes constituting 



