A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF THE BLOODVESSELS. 
257 
Intimately connected witli the physiology of the hepatic afferent 
vessel is the question — What becomes of the food eaten, and the 
fluids drunk, after they have been received by the alimentary tube ] 
In other words, through what vessel, and into what vessel, do the 
fluids pass, and likewise the solids, after they have undergone 
fluidification or digestion ? Are they both imbibed by the gastro- 
intestinal capillaries, and then transmitted by the gastro-intestinal 
veins into the middle of the hepatic afferent vessel I Or are they 
both imbibed by the lacteals, and transmitted by the thoracic duct 
into the left subclavian vein] Or do the fluids drunk take the 
former course, and the fluidified solids the latter ] 
If, before birth, the vessel which conveys the materiel of nou- 
rishment and growth to the foetus — the umbilical vein — instead of 
going to the liver and terminating in the hepatic capillaries, like the 
permanent hepatic afferent vessel, had gone behind the liver, and, 
like the thoracic duct, running along the spine, had ultimately ter- 
minated in the left subclavian vein ; and if, in addition to this, the 
thoracic duct of the adult, instead of being so much less, had been 
very considerably larger than the umbilical vein of the foetus, I would 
not then presume to call in question the truth of the general opinion, 
that Ojfter birth the lacteals and thoracic duct convey the material 
of nourishment and growth from the alimentary tube into the left 
subclavian vein. But as such is not the anatomical disposition of 
the umbilical vein and thoracic duct, I venture to take a totally 
different view. I maintain that the fluids drunk and the solids 
eaten are both imbibed, the former rapidly, and the latter slowly, 
and not until they have undergone fluidification by the gastro- 
intestinal capillaries ; that they then pass through the gastro- 
intestinal veins into the middle of the trunk of the hepatic afferent 
vessel ; and that the hepatic afferent vessel, being contractile as well 
as distensible throughout, (i. e. in its roots, trunk, and branches), 
propels them with an intermittent and slow motion through the 
hepatic capillaries. I hold, therefore, that the materials of which 
the blood is formed, or, as I may now say, the blood itself, passes 
first through the hepatic system ; secondly, through the pulmonic 
system; and thirdly through the systemic system. From the 
systemic system a small portion finds its way back again into the 
hepatic afferent vessel (i. e. into its extreme roots by the splenic 
artery, into its extreme branches by the hepatic artery, and into 
the middle of its trunk by the gastro-intestinal veins) ; but by far 
the larger portion passes by the superior and inferior venae cavae 
again into the pulmonic afferent vessel, and so through the pul- 
monic and systemic systems alternately, and for an indefinite 
number of times; that is, until its component particles are either 
deposited in some tissue, or eliminated in some secretion. 
