104 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1684. 



plied, that in all the instances of the 2d and 3d cases, a considerable quantity 

 of aliment was taken in by each dog, not long before his death ; that some of 

 this matter was seen in the primae viae of every one of them ; an argument it 

 was not all distributed ; that there is no way certainly known, by which liquors 

 are discharged the primes viae, in this species of animals, beside vomiting, siege, 

 and by the lacteals; and since neither of the two former took place, it may not 

 be unreasonable to suppose, that part of this matter was, at each dissection, in 

 its way through the lacteals to the blood; all the operations being at such dis- 

 tances from the time of the matter being taken in, at which most liquid ali- 

 ments are observed to swell up the lacteals. 



But farther, whoever shall insist upon this argument, if he derives his liquor 

 refluus from the musculous tunics of the intestines, is liable to the objection 

 beforementioned against that opinion ; if from the pancreas, glandularum plexus 

 fragiformes, and liver, will find it no easy thing to account, why this liquor 

 should be admitted the lacteals, and the water (taken in specie in the experi- 

 ments of the 2d kind, as also in the first instance of the 3d kind, and included 

 in the broth given in the second instance of the third kind) should be excluded ; 

 although in some of these instances it was seen to have almost reached the 

 caecum : especially since it is sufficiently proved, that decoctions of Indigo and 

 stone blue have found their way into the lacteals. 



Now if the liquor, seen in the pellucid lacteals of the last two kinds of expe- 

 riments, did in a great measure, for I by no means exclude the refluent liquor, 

 consist of the matter lately taken in before the dogs were opened; we may with 

 good reason imagine, that water drank on an empty stomach, as it was in the 

 second case, by several other quadrupeds, and men as well as dogs, will pass 

 the lacteals, not under a white colour, but rather pellucid ; and such cases are 

 not uncommon ; particularly, this seems to hold true in those who drink great 

 quantities of diuretic mineral waters. And what is here said of water, is not 

 unlikely to be true of several other liquors, as wine, beer, &c. at least so far as 

 that they may not pass white through the lacteals. Again, if this principle be 

 true, the third kind of these experiments will go yet farther, and argue, that 

 the whole quantity of chyle, arising from some sorts of meat and drinks, taken 

 either at, or near the same time ; or from some sorts of meat taken alone, is 

 not always white; for the lacteals, which appeared perfectly white in the several 

 instances of the third kind, were far inferior in number to those that were pel- 

 lucid in the same dissections : but tlie proportion of the white to the diluted 

 and the pellucid chyle, depends upon so very many circumstances, as the qua- 

 hty of both meats and drinks, the distance between the time of their being 

 taken, and the proportion of one to the other, that it seems almost impossible 

 to determine it. 



