Abstract
THIS book is good reading since it shakes convictions and stifles beliefs ; and, exposing our ignorance, it will stimulate research. The first chapter is coldly anatomical, but warm argument soon begins. In the second chapter, the authors have to consider the permeability of capillaries in order to account for the composition of tissue fluids and lymph. Here there is difficulty with the albumins and globulins often present in lymph: it is agreed that they are derived from the plasma of the blood, but how do they leak out of the capillaries? The stand is taken that they pass through the endothelial cells under a pressure of a few centimetres of water: but can molecules having molecular weights of many thousands enter, pass through, and emerge from the cytoplasm of endothelial cells where equally large molecules are abundant? If this be the way, there ought to be differential filtration, the smaller albumin molecule passing in greater abundance than the globulin, and yet, as the authors show, the ratio is approximately the same in lymph and plasma. The other way is between the endothelial cells, where there is discontinuity in structure between cytoplasm and intercellular matrix, surely a likely place for leakage. When we come to the passage of these proteins into the lymphatics from the tissue spaces a further difficulty arises: here there is no positive pressure to help the passage, and so some easier way than through the cytoplasm of the endothelial cell of the lymphatic vessel seems especially to be required.
Lymphatics, Lymph and Lymphoid Tissue
Their Physiological and Clinical Significance. By Prof. Cecil Kent Drinker and Dr. Joseph Mendel Yoffey. (Harvard University Monographs in Medicine and Public Health, No. 2.) Pp. x + 406. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press ; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 4 dollars.
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MOTTRAM, J. Lymphatics, Lymph and Lymphoid Tissue. Nature 149, 65 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149065a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149065a0