14 CHARLES F. W. MC CLURE 



suits. It is tlierefore clear that the loss of water in desiccated 

 frogs has been from tissues throughout the body, and has 

 not been a loss merely from the lymph of the subcutaneous 

 lymph sinuses. When we compare the behavior of the desic- 

 cated muscles with that of the controls, we observe that the 

 weight of the muscle which had not been desiccated has re- 

 mained practically stationary for a period of twenty-two 

 hours. The above experiments on desiccated muscles, like 

 those made on the -living frog (fig. 1), clearly indicate that 

 when the osmotic pressure of the muscle has been raised 

 above that of the fluid in which the muscles are immersed, 

 the muscles will gain weight by absorbing water and will 

 continue to do so until an equilibrium is established. 



Let us now see how we may apply the results obtained by 

 the above experiments to the muscles taken from oedematous 

 frogs, in which an oedema has been experimentally produced 

 by ligating either the leg or the ureters. 



"We know that lymph in the subcutaneous lymph sinuses 

 gains access to the blood plasma through the lymph hearts 

 and that some of this plasma escapes, as lymph, through the 

 capillary walls of the blood vessels into the tissue spaces, 

 where it becomes available for absorption by the muscles and 

 other tissues. If the osmotic pressure of the lymph in the 

 subcutaneous lymph sinuses of an oedematous ligated frog 

 should, by the gradual addition to the lymph of water through 

 the integument, become lower than that of a resting normal 

 muscle, we should expect that in time the osmotic pressure 

 of the lymph escaping into the tissue spaces would also be- 

 come lower than that of normal resting muscle, so that, in 

 virtue of differences in osmotic pressure, normal resting 

 muscles would gain weight when immersed in lymph taken 

 from an oedematous frog and oedematous muscles would lose 

 weight when immersed in a Ringer's solution isotonic with 

 normal resting muscle. 



On a priori grounds one might expect that when water is 

 constantly and continuously entering the subcutaneous lymph 

 sinuses of a frog in water, and that when all means of egress 



