The Temperaments or the Varieties of Physical Constitution in Man Considérés dans leurs relations avec le Character mental et les affaires pratiques de la Life, etc. (1878)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.?The Vital Or Nutritive System. The vital or nutritive system consists of three classes of organs, forming a complicated apparatus of tubes, which perform the functions of absorption, circulation, and secretion, and, incidentally, of purification. Their principal seat is the trunk of the body, and they exercise a minute peristaltic or pulsating motion. They are designated as? 1. The Lymphatics; 2. The Blood-vessels; and 3. The Glands. 1. The Lymphatics.?These are small transparent tubes furnished with valves at short intervals, and connected with the ganglia or glands which are distributed over the body, but are most numerous on the sides of the neck, the arm-pits, the groins, and the mesenteric folds of the intestines. Their office is to absorb nutriment and pass it into the circulation. They convey the lymph from every part of the system to the descending vena cava, where it mixes with the venous blood returning to the heart. When, through disease or deficiency of food, the supply" of nutriment from the ordinary sources is inadequate to the wants of the system, these absorbents take up the fat which has been deposited in the cellular tissues, to be reserved for a time of need, and empty it into the chyle duct, to be thrown into the circulation. This causes the falling away or emaciation observed in the sick or starving. Even the muscles and cellular tissues are thus appropriated, in extreme cases. These organs, when they open into the intestinesand serve to convey a portion of the nutriment elaborated by the stomach through the thoracic duct to its proper destination, are called lacteals. 2. The Blood- Vessels.?The circulation of the blood is effected by means of a system of tubes, consisting of the heart, the arteries, and the veins. The center of circulat...