Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 050, part 1.djvu/374

 order to be carried back to the blood, after it has performed its office in the bowels. Let it also be remembered, that these vessels, in other places of the body, are generally, when we trace them, lost in muscular, tendinous, or membranous parts: and then, I should presume, it may fairly, and with a good degree of evidence, be concluded, that the lymphatics of the body, in general, have their origin among the little cavities of the cellular substance of the muscles, among the mucous folliculi of the tendons, or the membranous receptacles and ducts of the larger glands: that their extremities or roots do, from these cavities, imbibe the moisture exhaled there from the ultimate arterial tubes, just as the lacteals (the lymphatics of the mesentery) do on the concave surface of the intestines: and that the minute imbibing vessels, by gradually opening one into another, form at length a lymphatic trunk, furnished with valves to prevent the return of its fluid, and tending uniformly, from the extremities and from the viscera, to reconvey to the blood that lymph, or that fine stream, with which they are kept in perpetual moisture; a circumstance indispensibly necessary to life and motion: while, at the same time, the continual re-absorption of that moisture by the lymphatics is no less necessary, in order to preserve the blood properly fluid, and to prevent the putrefaction, which would inevitably follow, if this animal vapour were suffered to stagnate in the cavities where it is discharged.

XLI.