26 CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



villi of the intestine absorb from the digested food and 

 carry to the blood. It contains much fat, to which it 

 owes its white milky appearance. It further contains 

 the ingredients for the formation of fibrine, and curdles 

 soon after it is withdrawn from circulation. Then 

 there is potassium-albumen, and the ordinary albumen 

 of serum. There are also lactates, sugar, and urea 

 contained in chyle, besides a certain amount of alkaline 

 salts. Chyle is the material by means of which the 

 blood is constantly renewed. It contains mostly some 

 white and red blood-corpuscles, which leads to the idea 

 that they might perhaps be formed in certain lymphatic 

 glands through which the chyle has to pass. Before 

 entering the blood, chyle is always mixed with a con- 

 siderable quantity of lymph, which differs from chyle 

 only by the absence of fat in emulsion. The lymph is 

 transuded serum of the blood, which penetrates into 

 the tissues and there performs its functions ; it is then 

 reabsorbed and carried back to the circulation by the 

 lymphatic vessels. There are many derangements of 

 the lymph and chyle which occur simultaneously with 

 diseased glands in scrophula, and in tuberculosis, and 

 it is probable that improper nutrition has the main 

 share in the production of these derangements in a 

 great number of young children. 



^ke peculiar shape of the blood corpuscles appears 

 biooJf-cof- to be partly dependent upon their chemical constitution. 

 This latter is the product of their own powers and 

 their interchange with those of the surrounding serum. 

 They have a certain specific gravity, which is main- 

 tained or varied (in diseases, in different classes of 



