472 Drs. Herring and Simpson. Relation of the [May 31. 



this procedure the injection mass is forced into large lymphatic vessels which 

 lie deeply in the wall of the vein, and it can readily pass from them through 

 the liver to issue by the efferent lymphatics in the portal fissure. Budge was 

 the first to describe the lymphatics of the hepatic veins, and to show that 

 they are very numerous in this situation. He stated that the trunks are 

 large, and have no valves ; in the walls of the large veins there may be from 

 60 to 70 trunks, in the medium sized veins 15 to 20, and from 3 to 5 in the 

 small, and they are lined with endothelial cells. Budge found that the 

 injection passed through the walls of the lobules of the liver in spaces lying 

 between the walls of the blood-vessels and the liver cells, and opened into the 

 large vessels accompanying the branches of the portal vein. The spaces, he 

 argued, must be lymphatics, because they afford the only means of communi- 

 cation between the hepatic and portal lymphatic trunks. 



In 1876 Kupffer (37) described in the liver the star-shaped cells which 

 have since borne his name. He believed them to be connective-tissue 

 cells lying outside the blood-vessels of the lobules, and related in all 

 probability to the origin of the lymphatics. 



Heidenhain (22), in 1881, spoke of Kupffer's cells as taking a probable part 

 in the formation of perivascular lymphatics. 



Disse (15), in 1890, published the results of a number of experiments in 

 which the liver lymphatics were injected by ITeischl's method. Disse 

 removed the liver immediately after death, opened the hepatic veins and 

 introduced the nozzle of the syringe through the wall of one of the veins from 

 the inside. Watery solutions of Prussian blue, and in one case a - 75-per- 

 cent. solution of silver nitrate were injected, and in many of the experiments 

 the blood-vessels were subsequently filled with carmine gelatine from the 

 portal vein. After the injection was completed the liver was fixed and 

 hardened in alcohol. Disse reviewed the work of previous observers, and 

 raised the objection to most of it that, although spaces had been injected, it 

 had not been shown that they had definite walls bounding them. He held 

 that it was neccessary to prove that the spaces have demonstrable walls 

 which can be shown without filling them with injection mass. Disse's 

 results correspond very closely with those obtained by Budge. He found 

 large lymphatic trunks in the walls of the hepatic veins, and agreed with 

 Budge that they are lined by endothelial cells. The injection material 

 introduced into the wall of the vein quickly spreads under a low pressure, 

 and emerges by trunks in the portal fissure. Only a small portion of the 

 liver in the neighbourhood of the puncture is injected, and in this situation 

 the injection mass penetrates into the lobules and follows the blood-vessels, 

 filling clefts between them and the liver cells, and uniting outside the 



