196 LECTURE VIII. 



I have, moreover, pointed out the fact, that those or- 

 gans which with especial frequency exhibit this peculiar 

 combination of a so-called phlogistic state of the blood 

 with a local inflammation are generally abundantly pro- 

 vided with lymphatic vessels and connected with large 

 masses of lymphatic glands, whilst all those organs which 

 either contain very few lymphatics, or in which these 

 vessels are scarcely known to exist, do not exercise any 

 influence worth naming upon the amount of fibrine in 

 the blood. Former observers had already remarked 

 that there were inflammations occurring in very import- 

 ant organs, as for example, in the brain, in which the 

 phlogistic crasis was, properly speaking, not at all met 

 with. Now it is precisely in the brain that we have 

 scarcely any evidence of the existence of lymphatics. In 

 those cases, on the contrary, in which the composition of 

 the blood is earliest altered, namely, in diseases of the 

 respiratory organs, we find an unusually abundant net- 

 work of lymphatics. Not merely the lungs are pervaded 

 by, and covered with, them, but the pleura also has ex- 

 tremely numerous connections with the lymphatic sys- 

 tem, and the bronchial glands constitute almost the great- 

 est accumulations of lymphatic-gland substance possessed 

 by an organ in the whole body. 



On the other hand, we are acquainted with no fact 

 which shows it to be possible that, in consequence of a 

 simple increase of the pressure of the blood, or of a 

 simple change in the conditions which influence its cir- 

 culation, an exudation of fibrinous fluids could in any 

 organ take place into its parenchyma, or upon its sur- 

 face, from the blood. It is certainly generally imagined 

 that, when the current of the blood attains a certain 

 strength, fibrine begins to appear in the exudation, but 

 this has never been proved by experiment. Nobody has 

 ever been able, by the production of a mere change in 



