THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
vol. v. NOVEMBER, 1832. No. 59 . 
A SERIES OF ESSAYS ON THE BLOOD, BLOOD¬ 
VESSELS, AND ABSORBENTS. 
* 
By Mr . R. Vines, F.S., Royal Veterinary College . 
No. IV. 
On the immediate Communication of the Lymphatic Vessels with 
the Arterial. 
In the last Number of “ The Veterinarian,” after having 
endeavoured to shew that there was still some room for us vete- 
terinarians to institute a further inquiry into the nature and 
functions of absorbent vessels, the process of absorption, Sjc.; and 
after having given an outline of some of the different opinions 
which have been advanced on this important subject, I stated, 
that from the time of Mr. J. Hunter to the present, and more 
particularly in this country, it had been held and taught as a 
generally received theory, that, in the living body there were 
three orders of vessels, viz. arteries, veins, and absorbents; and 
that it had only of late been admitted, that the lymphatic vessels 
not only took their origin from surfaces, See. but from the ex¬ 
treme branches of the arteries, as had previously been asserted 
by Nuck, Cowper, &c.; and as a further proof of this, 1 intro¬ 
duced some important cases which occurred in the College 
about the period that I first became acquainted with the fact 
that the second class of lacteals were capable of receiving red 
blood from the arterial vessels, and, at the same time, becoming 
considerably enlarged in their size, so as to assume a character 
similar to that of the real veins. 
At the time when these cases fell under my observation, I 
was not aware that it had already been recorded as a fact, that 
the lymphatic vessels were capable of receiving red blood from 
the extreme branches of the arterial ones ; but, soon afterwards, 
as I was perusing Magendie’s Physiology, I found, to my great 
surprise, that this fact was there recorded in the following- 
words :—“ In animals dead in consequence of pulmonary or ab¬ 
dominal hemorrhage, Mascagni found the lymphatics of the 
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