138 



pink colour, does not resemble the curd of milk, so that all that has been 

 said by a few modern physiologists, the exact resemblance which they 

 have pretended to discover between milk and chyle, is totally void of 

 foundation. 



The lymph, which constantly unites with the chyle, before the latter 

 enters the san'guiferous system, on being received into a vessel by Mas- 

 cagni, coagulated in the space of seven- or ten minutes, turned sour, and 

 soon separated into two parts, the one more abundant, serous, in the 

 midst of which there floated a fibrous coagulum, which by contracting, 

 formed into a small cake on the surface of the fluid. Hence he concludes, 

 contrary to the opinion of Hew son, that lymph consists, for the greatest 

 part, of serum, and that fibrine constitutes its last part. 



XLIX. The practice of surgery in a great hospital, has afforded me 

 frequent opportunities of examining the lymph which is discharged, in 

 abundance, from ulcerated scrophulous tumours in the groin, in the ax- 

 illa, and in various other parts of the body. I have always met with a 

 liquid nearly transparent, slightly saline, coagulable by heat, alcohol, and 

 the acids. Small fibrous floculi form, even on the surface of the cloths 

 which are wetted with it, and show the existence of two parts, the one a 

 gelatino-albuminous fluid holding in solution several salts; the other, in 

 smaller quantity, is a fibrous substance which concretes spontaneously. 

 The lymph, in man and the warm-blooded animals, appears to me, in 

 every respect similar to the fluid which is contained in the vessels of 

 white-blooded animals.* 



* The subject of absorption has of late excited a very lively interest, and lias been 

 elucidated considerably by the experiments of Tiedemann and Gmelin, in Germany, 

 Magendie and Flandrin, in France, and Lawrance and Coates, in Philadelphia. 



The conclusions drawn from the experiments of Tiedemann and Gmelin are, that the 

 alimentary matters, the smelling, saline, colouring, and metallic substances taken into 

 the stomach and intestinal canal, after being mixed with several fluids, separated from 

 the mass of the blood to promote assimilation ; such as the saliva, the gastric juice, and 

 the bile, may pass into the mass of the blood by several channels : 1st. Through the ab- 

 sorbents and the thoracic duct. 2d. Through absorbents which are united with veins 

 in the mesenteric glands. 3d. Through the roots of the venaportje. Those substances 

 which are conveyed into the sanguiferous system, through the thoracic duct, as chyle, 

 are mixed, in their pussage through the mesenteric glands and the thoracic duct, with 

 a reddish coagulating fluid, secreted from the arterial blood in these glands, and in the 

 spleen, which brings the chyle to resemble blood. The substances, however, which 

 are carried to the vena portze, are assimilated to the mass of the blood, by being mixed 

 with venous blood, and by the change which they suffer in consequence of the secre- 

 tion of the bile. See Phil. Med. Jour. vol. iii. p. 149. 



The experiments instituted by the Philadelphia Academy of Medicine, and performed 

 by Drs. Lawrance and Coates, led to the following conclusions, which being drawn 

 after the repetition of those by Magendie, render it unnecessary to make a particular 

 reference to those of that gentleman. The American experimenters think that they 

 have established the following conclusions : 1st. That colouring matters are not ab- 

 sorbed by the lacteals in the living body. 2d. That camphor is absorbed with much 

 irregularity, and in too small quantity to afford proof of the route of absorption. 3d. 

 That assafoetida is permeating. 4th. That prussiate of potass enters by the lacteals and 

 ductus thoracicus. 5th. That mix vomica and prussic acid destroy life by their opera- 

 tions on the nerves, and probably in no other way. 6th. That the assertion of Magen- 

 die, that ink will infiltrate in the living body, is incorrect. 7th. That the odour of 

 camphor, assafoetida, and mint, infiltrate through the intestines. 8th. That the chemi- 

 cal and odoriferous substances just enumerated, are transmitted into the system with 

 much more delay and difficulty from the stomach than from the intestinal tube, and 

 wjth still less from the serous cavity of the abdomen. See Phil. Med. Jour. vol. iii. 

 p. 273. 



