322 IMBIBITION AND EXHALATION. 



a period of twelve hours, was a little over 9,000 grains in fifteen 

 minutes ; that is, five pounds an hour, or 120 pounds per day. In 

 another experiment, with a young bull, he actually obtained a little 

 over 100 pounds from a fistula of the thoracic duct, in twenty-four 

 hours. 



We have also obtained similar results by experiments upon the 

 dog and goat. In a young kid, weighing fourteen pounds, we have 

 obtained from the thoracic duct 1890 grains of lymph in three 

 hours and a half. This quantity would represent 540 grains in an 

 hour, and 12,690 grains, or 1.85 pounds in twenty-four hours; and 

 in a ruminating animal weighing 1000 pounds, this would corre- 

 spond to 132 pounds of lymph and chyle discharged by the thoracic 

 duct in the course of twenty-four hours. 



The average of all the results obtained by us, in the dog, at dif- 

 ferent periods after feeding, gives very nearly four and a half per 

 cent, of the entire weight of the animal, as the total daily quantity 

 of lymph and chyle. This is substantially the same result as that 

 obtained by Colin, in the horse ; and for a man weighing 140 

 pounds, it would be equivalent to between six and six and a half 

 pounds of lymph and chyle per day. 



But of this quantity a considerable portion consists of the chyle 

 which is absorbed from the intestines during the digestion of fatty 

 substances. If we wish, therefore, to ascertain the total amount of 

 the lymph, separate from that of the chyle, the calculation should 

 be based upon the quantity of fluid obtained from the thoracic 

 duct in the intervals of digestion, when no chyle is in process of 

 absorption. We have seen that in the dog, eighteen hours after 

 feeding, the lymph, which is at that time opaline and semi-transpa- 

 rent, is discharged from the thoracic duct, in the course of an hour, 

 in a quantity equal to 1.15 parts per thousand of the entire weight 

 of the animal. In twenty-four hours this would amount to 27.6 

 parts per thousand ; and for a man weighing 140 pounds this would 

 give 3.864 pounds as the total daily quantity of the lymph alone. 



It will be seen, therefore, that the processes of exudation and 

 absorption, which go on in the interior of the body, produce a very 

 active interchange or internal circulation of the animal fluids, which 

 may be considered as secondary to the circulation of the blood. 

 For all the digestive fluids, as we have found, together with the bile 

 discharged into the intestine, are reabsorbed in the natural process 

 of digestion and again enter the current of the circulation. These 

 fluids, therefore, pass and repass through the mucous membrane of 



