314 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



vasa inferentia, and to the elaboration of the lymph and chyle. 

 The liquids are afterwards conveyed away by the vasa efferen- 

 tia, and perhaps in part also by the veins. This point has 

 been denied by many celebrated anatomists and physiologists, 

 such as Haller, Cruikshank, Hewson, Mascagni, Soemmer- 

 ing, &c.; but it is to be feared that the authority of these great 

 men, may have caused a truth to be rejected, without previ- 

 ous examination. 



Besides the facts already related favouring the opinion in 

 question, we may remark that many observers have perceived 

 striae of chyle in the vena porta; we may add that a great 

 many anatomists have seen and I have often seen, the mercury 

 introduced into the lymphatic vessels of the mesentery, pass 

 beyond a gland, both in the vasa efferentia and in the veins of 

 the gland; now this passage is too easy and too constant to de- 

 pend on a double rupture, and not to a natural communication 

 of the lymphatic vessels and veins. 



477. Besides the lesions of the glands and lymphatic ves- 

 sels,* such as the inflammation of both, the wounds and rup- 

 tures of the vessels, their varicose dilatation, their narrowing 

 and obliteration, tubercles and other morbid productions in 

 the glands, &c. authors have caused the lymphatic system to 

 play a very great and indeed exaggerated part in most dis- 

 eases, by considering it as an apparatus of absorption. 



* S. Th. Soemmering, de morbis vasorum absorbentium corp. hum. in 8vo. 

 Traj. ad Mcen. 1795. 



