PECQUET 



27 



turgentis alveoli hwiore, dubium meum penitus 

 enei'vavit. . . . Laxatis vinculis, lacteus titrinqiic 

 rivulus in Cavam affatim Chylum profudit." 



It is to be noted that Asellius and Pecquet, both 

 of them, made their discoveries as it were by chance. 

 Unless digestion were going on, the lacteals would 

 be empty and invisible ; and, on the dead body, 

 lacteals, receptaculum, and thoracic duct would all 

 be empty. For these reasons, it cost a vast number 

 of experiments to prove the existence, and to dis- 

 cover the course, of these vessels. Once found in 

 living animals, they could be injected and dissected 

 in the dead body ; but they had been overlooked by 

 Vesalius and the men of his time. 



From the discovery of the lacteals came the dis- 

 covery of the whole lymphatic system. Daremberg, 

 in his Histoire des Sciences Me'dicales (Paris, 1870), 

 after an account of Pecquet 's work, says : — 



" Up to this point, we have seen English, 

 Italians, and French working together, with more 

 or less success and genius, to trace the true ways 

 of blood and chyle : there is yet one field of work 

 to open up, the lymphatics of the body. The chief 

 honour here belongs, without doubt, to the Swede 

 Rudbeck, though the Dane Bartholin has disputed 

 it with him, with equal acrimony and injustice." 



Rudbeck's work (1651-54) coincides exactly, in 

 point of time, with the first and second editions, 

 1 65 1 and 1654, of Pecquet's De Lactibus. It may 

 be said, therefore, that the whole doctrine of the 

 lymphatic system was roughed out halfway through 

 the seventeenth century. 



