On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis.

  • Willis, Robert, 1799-1878.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    channels, the various fluids which are spoken of as their secretions. In the same way precisely would it seem that the lym- phatics and lacteal vessels perform their functions. These VESSELS MAY, IN FACT, BE SHEWED AS THE ESSENTIAL ELE- MENTS OF A FILIFORM AND ALL BUT UNIVERSALLY DISTRIBUTED GLAND. Their walls and sacculated commencements—for they do not begin like veins in microscopic capillaries—have been shown by the latest and best observers* to be composed of an aggregation of granular matter, of nuclei, and of cells in various stages of development, precisely similar, as I con- ceive, to the ultimate elements of every secreting organ known. Here, as elsewhere, nuclei, in a ceaseless state of re- production, attract a quantity of granular matter about them, and then they become surrounded with a delicate envelope filled with fluid—they have grown into cells ; and these hav- ing attained maturity, and being then in contact with or produced upon the internal surface of the lymphatic vessels in whose walls they have grown, they give way and shed their contents into their cavities. The secreted fluid in reference to the lymphatic system is the lymph,—a fluid having on an average, as has been seen, about 96| per cent, of water and 85 per cent, of solid matter in its constitution, this solid mat- ter being identical in chemical composition with that of the liquor sanguinis.f The lymphatics then, or, to speak more accurately, the cells of which their walls are composed, manifest in the course of * VuU particularly tHe Allgemeine Anatomic of Henle, s. 550, and Tab. v. fig. 26. t There is every reason to believe that blood discs are developed in consider- able numbers in the lymphatic vessels : the albuminous fluid which they contain is fitted, we must presume, to prove the matrix or blastema of these important cells, and they are evolved in it probably as a matter of course, their formation and evolution being assisted by the elaboration which itundergoes in the lympha- tic glands. I cannot, however, regard this part of'the office of the lymphatic system at large as otherwise than, secondary, and in some sort adventitious, to that which is advocated for it in this paper.