Page:Structure and functions of the body; a hand-book of anatomy and physiology for nurses and others desiring a practical knowledge of the subject (IA structurefunctio00fiskrich).pdf/35

 *out the tissues, forming plexuses and being especially abundant where the blood is needed for other purposes than local nutrition, as in the secreting glands. Their diameter is so small that the red corpuscles have to pass in single file and may even then be squeezed out of shape. As they have no muscular tissue in their walls, they have no power of contracting. Their walls, however, like those of the smaller arteries and veins, are porous and by virtue of this quality they play an important part in the economy, since in them the exchange takes place between the tissues and the blood.

The arteries in general carry freshly oxidized blood and the veins blood from which the oxygen has been largely used up and which contains waste material. In the pulmonary system, however, the case is reversed, the pulmonary arteries conveying venous blood, as it is called, from the heart to the lungs to be oxidized and the veins returning the blood after it has received its new supply of oxygen.

The pumping of the blood through the arteries is assisted by the contractions of the muscular coat, while the elastic tissue, of which it contains a certain amount, gives elasticity to the walls and enables them to stretch and so to accommodate the larger blood supply forced into them at each beat by the heart. The walls of the veins have not the power of contracting and the blood is pushed through more by gravity and the action of the arteries than by any action of their own.

The walls of all the vessels are nourished by tiny blood-vessels in the outer coat, known as vasa vasorum, and the nerves that regulate the action of the arteries are the vasomotor nerves from the vasomotor center in the medulla. Sufficient impulse goes from this center to the blood-vessels all the time to keep them some-*what contracted, in a state of tone, that is, which is increased or diminished as the blood supply is to be diminished or increased.

Lymphatic System.—The lymphatic system also ex