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Show 80 Tim Lymphatic Glands. T116 Lymp/th/ic Glam] r. The vasa inferentia frequently run under or close to the side of other glands, before they terminate in their own glands, Without having the smallest communication with those glands. The vessel corresponding to the vasa inferentia, and which goes out of the gland on the opposite side, anatomists have termed was cficrcrzs, as car. rVing fluids out of the gland. I The vasa inferentia are almost always more numerous than the corresponding vessels going out of the gland. I have injected fourteen vasa inferentia on the thigh, belonging to the same gland; andhave no doubt-of there being four or five times that number, belonging to the gland, whtelr were not injected. To all of these, one vas efferens only corresponded, The vas efferens which went out of the gland on the opposite side. goes out of the gland in the same manner that a vas inferens enters it, that is, by short, extremely minute, radiated beginnings. The vasa efierentia are generally larger in size than the vasa inferentia. I have seen some of these as large as the thoracic duct itself. They generally terminate soonm other glands; with respect to which they becotne vasa inferentia. Anatomists speak as ifthc same lymphatic vessel might pass through a great many glands, before it terminated in the trunk ofthe system : Hallcr says, " Ad quintam usque glandulam, eandcm truncum laeteam quani mihi selegerem prosecutus sum." Though the vas efferens corresponds to the vas inferens, it is a perfectly distinct vessel, and the different glands are chained to one another by different vessels. There needs no other proof of this, than the instance I have already given, ofone vas effcrcns corresponding to fourteen or sixteen, or more, vasa inferentia. The nearer we come to the thoracic duct, the vasa efferentia are larger. On this is founded the distinction of the lacteals into those of primi and secundi generis; these last being five or six times larger than the former. The vasa elferentia are not always larger than the vasa inferentia; and vessels of the same size frequently connect several glands, one after another, together. 8t tia; whilst others as strenuously contend that they are congeries of cells, totally distinct from the lymphatic vessels. Arguments have been adduced on both sides, from physiology, from the appearances in some diseases of glands, as well as from anatomy. Those who favour the opinion of the glands being a conglomeration of lymphatic vessels, contend, that if the absorbed fluids were once poured out into cells, they know of no power by which they could ever get ottt again. " Albinus argentum vivum minime in spatiola aliqua glandulosae fabrica effundi monebat. In ea enint cavea si aliqua hujus liquoris in massulas et guttulas cH‘usio locum haberet, nulla porro vi credcbat cffcctum iri ut in vasa avehentia idem resumeretur." This argument is taken from what happens in the dead body, and of course is not properly applicable to the living. If it proves any thing, it proves that Albinus was not dexterous in injecting lymphatic glands; and indeed Haller confesses as much; for he says, " Nulla vi fluidissimum metallum in lactea vasa impulsum ad totam lacteam systema, nut in ductum thoraci- cum, urgere potuerim, neque magis successisse vidi cum sumrnus anatomi- cus Albinus id experimentum fecerit." "7e find at present very little dif. ficulty in doing what Haller says they could not do ulla vi. Besides, the fluids poured out into cells may be pushed on by the vis a tergo, as the arterial blood in the cells of the placenta is pushed on into the orifices of the veins; or, the fluids may be absorbed from the cells of the gland by the orifices of the vas efferens, as easily as it was absorbed at first by the ori- fices of the vas inferens, from the original surface-The arguments de- duced from the diseased appearances in the glands are not more satisfactory, though they are brought to prove the reverse of the former. It has been urged, that the glands must be cellular; the uniform appearance in their diseases shew it. They degenerate sometimes into hydatids, or round vesicles; which may be easily accounted for, if we suppose cells obstruet~ ed and enlarged in the gland. Stony concretions are sometimes found in them, and these are almost always ofa globular figure. Ossifications are Anatomists have been, and still are, divided in their opinions respecting frequently found in them, and these are always externally tuberculatcd; a the minute structure ofthat part ofthe substance of the glands, with which proof, in their opinion, of their beginning in, and retaining as they encreascd the figure of, the cells ofthe glands. In the scropholous suppuration of these glands, the pus is found cheesy and solid, in separate, and generully l\l the lymphatic vessels are more immediately connected. One set contend, llltll the glands are principally made up of convolutions of the vasainfercnila |