ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 43 



environment along the lines of least resistance. A further 

 resemblance between these natural occurrences, thus 

 brought together, is that the matter affected and circu- 

 lating in both instances at this supreme juncture has been 

 reduced to a molecular or atomic condition, in which 

 state it is deposited by metabolic selection and a cool 

 atmosphere respectively on the respective "watersheds" 

 of living tissue, and arresting earthen elevation or moun- 

 tain ridge, so to speak. In the case of the organised 

 textures of the body generally the elements of the 

 extravasated capillary blood plasma are taken up by the 

 process of nutrition embodied in and appropriated by 

 these textures, for a time remaining constituent portions 

 of them, and again, by katabolic change, being released 

 from organic union and permitted to resume or to pursue 

 another but still onward course or circulation, when they 

 are taken up by the incipient lymphatic vessels and 

 returned again into the blood circulation. This first stage 

 of what we may call the katabolic return or inverse 

 -circulation is thus preceded by what we would denominate 

 the central or innermost circulation of all, or what is 

 equivalent to a molecular, or incorporative, (if we may 

 use the term) circulation, the rate of which must be slow 

 or quick according to the intensity and volume of integra- 

 tive or disintegrative tissue changes and vital tissue tone ; 

 this tissue, or incorporative, circulation being succeeded 

 by the lymph circulation, which commences on the distal 

 side of the organic watershed. Contemporary with the 

 latter ensue quite a number of more limited or circum- 

 scribed subsidiary circulations, which have been interpo- 

 lated by or projected from the central circulation, and 

 which are connected with the nutritive conditions and the 

 organic preparation of the blood material, as well as with 

 the separation and elimination of effete materials. IJach 

 of these subsidiary, or interpolated, circulations is usually 

 developed in and around a definite glandular organ of 

 greater or lesser dimensions, sometimes called ductless, 

 and hence we must infer that the functions of such organs 

 are related to the work of sanguification, or a process of 

 modification of the blood constituents of a specifically 

 vital character, to suit the nutritive exigencies and neces- 



