us 



of hydrogen contained in a tube, with a piece of platinized platina in 

 contact with the metallic salt : nitric acid and persalts of iron, on the 

 other hand, yielded their oxygen by the influence of the same agent. 



The general conclusion which he deduces from his experiments is 

 that, when a metallic solution is subjected to voltaic action, water is 

 decomposed, its oxygen passing in one direction, and its hydrogen in 

 the opposite direction; the latter element performing at the moment 

 of its evolution at the negative pole the same part with respect to a 

 solution of sulphate of copper, that a plate of iron or zinc would per- 

 form to the same solution. 



March 16, 1843. 

 FRANCIS BAILY, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. 



William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, M.D., was balloted for, and 

 duly elected a Fellow of the Society. 



The following papers were read, viz. — 



I. " On the import and office of the Lymphatic Vessels." By 

 Robert Willis, M.D. Communicated by John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. 



That absorption is the special office of the lymphatic vessels was, 

 until very lately, a universally received doctrine in physiology : but 

 it is now admitted that if they exercise this faculty, it can be only to 

 an inconsiderable extent ; and physiologists of high authority have 

 even denied that they possess any absorbing power at all. This 

 last is the opinion of Magendie, in which the author concurs. So lately 

 as 1841, Rudolph Wagner asserted that "neither anatomical nor 

 physiological considerations render any satisfactory account of the 

 import and office of the lymphatics," which thus, shorn of their 

 ancient office, were repudiated as a superfluous apparatus in the 

 animal mechanism. The grand organs of absorption the author 

 believes to be the veins ; and a principal object of his paper is to 

 point out the mode in which they acquire this remarkable faculty. 

 The principal condition which this faculty of imbibition implies, is 

 a difference in density between the contents of the vessels which are 

 to absorb, and the contents of those which furnish the matter to be 

 absorbed. If the several constituent materials of the body, both fluid 

 and solid, were to remain in the same unaltered state, both chemi- 

 cally and physically, there could be no interchange among them : 

 in order that mutual penetration may take place between two ele- 

 ments, the one must differ from the other : that which is designed 

 to absorb must be, with relation to that which is to be absorbed, 

 more dense ; that is, must contain a smaller quantity of water in 

 proportion to its solid ingredients. For the continuance of the de- 

 licate processes concerned in the access and removal of the nutrient 

 fluids, it is necessary that a difference should be established be- 

 tween the arterial and the venous blood in respect of density. This 

 purpose the author conceives is accomplished by the abstraction from 



