LYMPHATIC GLANDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2257, 31 March 1921, Page 1

LYMPHATIC GLANDS.

. Lymphatic glands are the little kernels that we can sometimes Teel in the neck; they are always there in sickness and in health, but in sickness they are enlarged, and then we can both see and feel them. In health they are almost too small to be left. These glands are like stations on a railway line, or on a canal system. They are all connected with the lymphatic channels that run all over the body. We. are quite familiar with the blood vessels; everyone knows what a vein is, and that, it contains blood. But the other great system, the lymphatic system, is not so well known. The lymphatic channels are very small, and they contain a liquid which is very like blood, except that it is not coloured red; it is colourless. Take the case of the upper limb. The lymphatic channels run all over the hand and arm; the fluid travels up towards the elbow and at the elbow is a small gland; most of the channels avoid that gland, and travel on up the arm-pit, and there a bunch of glands is found. Pursuing their course, they go through the arm-pit and up into (he neck. CAUSE AND EFFECT.

In combating disease, lymphatic glands and their channels play a very big part. The poison is tackled by the glands. Sometimes the gland wins, and the disease is downed; sometimes the disease wins and the gland is destroyed in an abscess, which bursts and discharges on the skin. Please note that the poisonous germs do not appear spontaneously in the gland; the germs are carried to the gland from some distant part. The example of a swelling of the armpit following a festered finger will remind you of this, Similarly a septic corn will give you a swollen gland in the groin. The doctor always seeks for the cause of the mischief, not in the gland itself, but in the possibly distant region that is drained by the gland.