552 
ON THE LYMPHATICS. 
he never was able to persuade the majority of anatomists that 
the honour of the discovery did not belong to Thomas Bartholine. 
Although we are informed that it was these anatomists who first 
discovered the lymphatic vessels, yet it appears they left this 
subject in a very unfinished and uninvestigated state, both as re¬ 
gards their origin , distribution , and use. Consequently the at¬ 
tention of anatomists and physiologists has, from that time to 
the present, been more or less excited, with a view of bringing 
this important subject to some acknowledged decision; and 
among the writers and experimentalists on this point, we have 
the names of Professors Boerhaave, Malpighi, Ruysh, Nuck, 
Cowper, Lister, the Hunters, the Munros, Cruikshank, Hewson, 
Magendie, Flandrin, Fcedera, &c. &c. 
Boerhaave, as also his cotemporaries and followers, considered 
the lymphatics as a system of serous veins; either as taking their 
immediate origin from or as being a continuation of the minutest 
terminations of the seriferous arteries ; and that their only use was, 
to receive the transparent, and refuse the red or coarser part of the 
blood. This theory was more generally believed when the fact be¬ 
came known of Nuck, Cowper, Lister, &c. being enabled to inject 
the lymphatic vessels from the arterial. This continued to be a 
prevailing opinion until about the middle of the last century; and 
although it was admitted that the lacteal vessels were for the 
purpose of absorbing the chyle , yet it was generally imagined, 
according to the old notion, that the red and real veins were the 
principal absorbents of the body , until Dr. W. Hunter*, in a 
controversy with Dr. Munro about some discoveries of the lym¬ 
phatic vessels, by his own imperfect reasoning, and some very 
rude experiments made by his brother, J. Hunterf, not only at¬ 
tempted to overthrow the doctrine of the lymphatics taking their 
origin from the arteries, but also endeavoured to prove that they 
were a distinct and separate system of vessels , the sole absorbents 
of the body , and also that they took their origin from the internal 
and external surfaces of the body. This idea was founded on the 
* See Hunter’s Medical Commentaries, 1762. 
f So great is the tendency of the human understanding to admit error, 
that Hunter contrived a false theory upon one of the most important 
functions of life; and supported it with difficulty upon some inaccurate ex¬ 
periments, which were every way inefficient. His ideas were immediately 
and universally admitted ; they are even defended at present with a heat and 
zeal w hich truth rarely inspires. Harvey, who instituted so many and such 
beautiful experiments to demonstrate the circulation of the blood, had to 
combat, for thirty years, against the imputation of being avisionary, and to 
obtain a reception for one of the finest discoveries that ever did honour to 
human ingenuity.— Magendie r s Physiology , page 312 ; translated from the 
French Second Edition, by E. Milligan, M.D. 1826. 
