THE LYMPHATICS. 153 



lymph is a clear, transparent fluid, slightly alkaline in 

 reaction, as is the blood, and containing albumen, salts, 

 and a variable amount of extractive. As it comes from 

 the tissues it is perfectly structureless; but, after passing 

 through lymphatic glands, it contains lymph corpuscles 

 identical in all respects with the white corpuscles of the 

 blood, and also becomes spontaneously coagulable, forming a 

 weak clot. The function of the lymphatic glands appears, 

 therefore, to be to form white corpuscles; and this view is 

 corroborated by their structure : for the lymphatics, on enter- 

 ing them, lose their proper walls, and are continued into 

 irregular spaces, winding between masses of stroma loaded 

 with corpuscles which, as they develop, are loosened, and 

 float away in the lymph. The addition of the corpuscles 

 to the lymph is sufficient to account for its acquiring the 

 property of coagulability; the reason for the lymph, as it 

 comes from the tissues, not being spotaneously coagulable, 

 being simply that, like liquor sanguinis drawn pure from 

 the vein (p. 110), it contains no flbrinoplastin. 



115. The absorbents which come from, the small intestine, 

 although they in no way differ from the lymphatics of the 

 rest of the body, are distinguished as lacteals. The dis- 

 tinction is unscientific, inasmuch as the lacteals are simply 

 the lymphatics of the small intestine, carrying lymph and 

 nothing else when the intestine is empty ; but the name 

 arose naturally enough from the milky appearance of their 

 contents during digestion, and must be submitted to. The 

 lacteals pass from the intestine back between the folds of 

 the mesentery to reach the receptaculum chyli, and in 

 their course traverse a plentiful group of lymphatic glands, 

 named, from their position, mesenteric, and subject, like 

 other lymphatic glands, to be irritated into inflammation 

 and disease, when the fluids reaching them by their afferent 

 vessels are altered by inflammation of the tissues from which 

 they are derived. Moreover, such disease, unfortunately 

 common in weak children, is of much graver importance in 

 tlie instance of these than of other lymphatic glands, since 

 it interferes with the passage of nourishment from the intes- 

 tine into the blood. This constitutes the essence of the 

 disease called tabes mesenterica. 



