220 LECTURE IX. 



indeed in great part filled with connective tissue, they 

 have poured out the whole mass of cinnabar, so that in 

 part it still lies within the intervening trabeculae, but yet 

 in part has penetrated into the follicles themselves. The 

 preparation comes from the arm of a soldier who had the 

 figures rubbed in in 1809, so that the mass 

 has remained nearly fifty years in the 

 same place. None of it has penetrated 

 farther than this spot ; even the next 

 layer of follicles does not contain any. 

 The particles are however so small, and 

 the majority of them so minute in com- 

 parison with the cells of the gland, that 

 they cannot at all be compared to pus- 

 corpuscles. Now when such molecules as these are un- 

 able to pass, when such extremely minute particles cause 

 an obstruction, it would be somewhat bold to imagine 

 that pus-corpuscles, which are relatively large, could 

 effect a passage. 



This arrangement, gentlemen, by means of which the 

 free current of fluid is interrupted in the lymphatic 

 glands, and the coarser particles are retained there in 

 quite a mechanical manner, admits, as may readily be 

 conceived, of no other kind of reabsorption from the pe- 

 riphery through the medium of the lymphatic vessels than 

 that of simple fluids. We should indeed be mistaken, if 

 we were to consider the whole action of the lymphatic 

 glands to consist merely in their being interposed like 

 filters between the different portions of the lymphatic ves- 

 sels. They have manifestly another part to play, inas- 

 much as the substance of the glands indubitably takes up 



Fig. 68. Reticulum of an axillary gland filled with cinnabar, from an arm which 

 had been tattooed (Fig. 67). a. Part of an inter-follicular trabecula with a lymph- 

 atic vessel ; b one of its larger branches entering into a follicle ; c, c the anasto- 

 mosing, nucleated networks of the reticulum ; the dark granules are particles of 

 cinnabar. 300 diameters. 



