The Fluids of the Body (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... mode of absorption from most parts of the body must require considerable time. It is the only way which is open to insoluble particles, such as Indian ink used in tattooing or micro-organisms, living or dead, which have effected an entrance into the tissues. The question arises as to how far the lymphatic channels are necessary for the absorption of the normal constituents of lymph. Pathological evidence certainly appears to indicate that for certain of the normal constituents lymphatic channels are necessary. We know that complete obstruction of these lymphatics, such as occurs in elephantiasis, causes great lymphangiectasis with overgrowth of the subcutaneous connecting tissues; and the presence of lymphatics throughout practically all parts of the body suggests that there are constituents of the lymph which are incapable of absorption by any other way than that of the lymphatics. That the lymphatics are not the only channel of absorption is shown by the results of numerous experiments which have been carried out on absorption by the blood vessels. We know, for instance, that strychnine or other drug injected under the skin of a limb will exert its poisonous effects on the nervous system long before the drug itself appears in the lymph flowing from the limb, and therefore before it can have arrived by way of the lymphatics in the circulation. The very scanty lymph flow from a limb shows moreover that the ordinary interchanges between the living tissues and the blood (interchanges which involve oxygen and carbon dioxide as well as the foodstuffs and excreta of the cells), are carried out through the interstitial fluid without the intermediation of the lymphatics at all. Nor is the mechanism of these interchanges difficult to understand, in the...