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Show 21.1 * 0f lbt particular Distribution of the Absorbent Vtztrz‘ls. fore the glands in the axilla were become swelled, and tender. If many glands in the axilla are infected, the case is desperate, as it is hardly pos- sible every diseased gland can be got at, so as to be cut out. I have seen twentv cut out and tore out without success. Sometimes, as I have already noticed, (page 145.) they surround the axillary artery in such a tnanner as to make excision, without cutting out the artery also, impossible: they also get entangled in the same way with the principal nerves, so as that it would be necessary to cxtirpate the arm itself at the joint; even then we could not be sure of success. The disease indeed will seem to be stopt for a year or more, but always returns again, and kills-The case is equally or perhaps more hopeless, if the mammary absorbents have carried the poison to glands within the chest, out of the reach of surgery, the patient then must die. In the cancer of the testicles in men, we have not even the advantage of being able to cut out the diseased absorbent glands : these are lodged in the cavity of the abdomen, of course always out of the reach of surgery; nor can we form so clear aprognostic in this disease, as in the cancer of the breasts of women; for there, we know whether the glands are diseased or no, as within our sight and feeling, which the others are not; CONCLUSION. I'r appears then, from the foregoing treatise, that the lacteals and lymphatics of the human body are not a trifling appendage of the red veins, but form of themselves a grand system for absorption; and, so far as we have yet discovered them, are not only equal in number to the arteries and veins, but actually surpass them. I mentioned Haller's opinion of their inferiority; he said, " Deinde fateri oportct, post tot industriorum virorum labo- res, fragmenta tamen esse ea omnia qua de vasis lymphatieis scimus, neque ullo modo cum arteriarum ct venarum attt nervorum historia descriptiones vasorum aquasorum comparari posse."-If I have not entirely disproved this assertion, I hope I have gone some way towards it; and I have no accordingly, I have seen the operation of cutting oli a cancerous testicle doubt bttt that the history of his mm (11111031: will be soon as complete as apparently succeed in men for a year or two, after which, in the dead body, it was found the lumbar glands were infected, and enlarged to a very enormous size. that of the arteries, veins, or nerves. I have not only laboured much to- wards the completing of this history myself, but I have the pleasure to see it every day improving in the hands of my pupils, from whom I have con- cealed nothing. The large thoracic duct, plate V. will almost exceed belief; it is exactly, however, as we found it in the human body. The man appeared to be about forty years of age. We know nothing of his history. How it came to be of this size I know not. There was _no obstruction in the leftjugular and subclavian veins, neither were they enlarged, of course there was no obstruction in the heart or lungs; there was no stricture on the duct itself, near its entrance into the veins; no uncommon swelling in any of the neigh- bouring parts compressing it here. The great trunks of the absorbents, accompanying the large arteries in the extremities, were in proportion large, but the cutaneous absorbents were not larger than usual. The absorbent vessels, like the veins, become varicose and enlarged from the weakness of CONCLUSION. their "T \\ "\ "VHF "9.1m |