50 A MANUAL OF PHYSIOLOGY 



sugar are also found in small quantities. The inorganic salts 

 are the same as those of the blood-serum, and exist in about the 

 same amount, sodium preponderating among the bases, as it 

 does in serum. The following table shows the results of analyses 

 of lymph from man and the horse (Munk) ; 



Chyle is merely the name given to the lymph coming from 

 the alimentary canal. The fat of the food is absorbed by the 

 lymphatics, and during digestion the chyle is crowded with fine 

 fatty globules, which give it a milky appearance. There may 

 also be in chyle a few red blood-corpuscles, carried into the 

 thoracic duct by a back-flow from the veins into which it opens. 

 Chyle clots like ordinary lymph, the size of the clot varying 

 according to the quantity of fat present and enmeshed by the 

 fibrin. Wounds of the thoracic duct or of lymphatics opening 

 into it are occasionally produced in operations on the neck, and 

 when these remain open chyle may be readily collected. In 

 samples obtained from a patient only a week after the section of 

 a branch of the duct during an operation for the removal of 

 tubercular glands, water constituted 928*90 parts in 1,000, total 

 solids 71*10, inorganic solids 6*04, organic solids 65-06, proteins 

 18-52, ether extract (fatty substances) 19-30 (Sollmann). The 

 following is the composition of a sample analyzed by Paton, and 

 obtained from a fistula of the thoracic duct in a man : 



Water - - 953*4 



Solids - - 46-6 



Inorganic 6' s 



Organic 40' i 



Proteins - 13 '7 



Fats - - 24-06 



Cholesterin - o'6 



Lecithin 0-36 



The quantity of chyle flowing from the fistula was estimated 

 at as much as 3 to 4 kilos per twenty-four hours, or nearly as 



* The term ' extractives ' is somewhat loosely applied to organic 

 substances which exist in so small an amount, or have such indefinite 

 chemical characters that they cannot be separately estimated. 



