LYMPHATIC GLANDS IN CANCER AND SYPHILIS. 221 



into itself certain ingredients from the fluid mass of the 

 lymph, retains them, and thereby also alters the chemi- 

 cal constitution of the fluid, so that it quits the gland all 

 the more altered because it must at the same time be 

 assumed that the gland yields up certain constituents to 

 the lymph, which did not previously exist in it. 



I will not here enter into minute details, since the his- 

 tory of every malignant tumour affords the best examples 

 in support of this position. When an axillary gland be- 

 comes cancerous, after previous cancerous disease of the 

 mamma, and when during a long period only the axil- 

 lary gland remains diseased without the group of glands 

 next in succession or any other organs becoming affected 

 with cancer, we can account for this upon no other sup- 

 position than that the gland collects the hurtful ingredi- 

 ents absorbed from the breast, and thereby for a time 

 affords protection to the body, but at length proves insuf- 

 ficient, nay, perhaps at a later period itself becomes a 

 new source of independent infection to the body, inas- 

 much as a further propagation of the poisonous matter 

 may take place from the ''diseased parts of the gland. 

 Equally instructive examples are afforded by the his- 

 tory of syphilis, in which a bubo may for a time become 

 the depository of the poison, so that the rest of the eco- 

 nomy is affected in a comparatively trifling degree. As 

 Ricord has shown, it is precisely in the interior of the 

 real substance of the gland that the virulent matter is 

 found, whilst the pus at the circumference of the bubo is 

 free from it ; only so far as the parts come into contact 

 with the lymph conveyed from the diseased part, do they 

 absorb the virulent matter. 



If we apply these facts to the reabsorption of pus, we 

 are not, even in the case when it has really made its way 

 into lymphatic vessels, at all entitled to conclude that as 

 an immediate consequence of this irruption the blood be- 



