Structure and Functions of the Body: A Hand-Book of Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses and Others Desiring a Practical Knowledge of the SubjectFiske, Annette
Science
Structure and Functions of the Body: A Hand-Book of Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses and Others Desiring a Practical Knowledge of the Subject
Fiske, Annette
Human anatomy; Physiology
The lymph glands serve as a protection to adjacent parts and when it
leaves the gland the lymph is purer and richer in leucocytes than
when it entered. In fact, they filter harmful matter from the lymph
and apparently also form white corpuscles. Normally they can with
difficulty be felt, but in disease, if the leucocytes are unable to
destroy or carry off the poison, the lymph carries it along to the
glands, which swell and become tender. If the infection is not severe
the swelling goes down and the tenderness passes after a short time,
but if it is severe, there may be suppuration and abscess formation
and the gland even perhaps be destroyed, giving its life for the
health of the part. Thus a wound in the foot, if infected, may cause
irritation and enlargement of the glands at the knee and in the groin.
The lymphatic glands are frequently the seat of tubercular infection,
especially in the neck, and are enlarged in scarlet fever, tonsillitis,
and diphtheria. In syphilis there is general glandular enlargement, and
the glands in the groin become enlarged in all diseases of the genital
organs. In malignant growths, such as cancer, the extension of the
disease is often along the lines of the lymphatics.
=Glands.=--Of glands in general a word might now be spoken. They are of
two kinds, excreting and secreting, and, when simple, are formed by the
folding in of a free surface, as in the case of the salivary, gastric,
and sebaceous glands, the cells at the gland becoming so modified as to
be able to perform the function of excreting or secreting. In racemose
glands the gland is broken up into many pockets. Excreting glands take
from an organ or from a part substances which have outlived their
usefulness and are to be cast out of the body, while the secreting
glands form from the blood substances that did not exist in it before,
but which are of use to the body, as the ptyalin of the saliva. A
strict line cannot, however, be drawn between the two kinds of glands,
most glands partaking more or less of both functions, though the
sebaceous and sweat glands are probably purely excreting glands and
the salivary glands are almost purely secreting. The glands, moreover,
are more or less interchangeable in their functions, that is, they
have vicarious function, and one gland can take up and do for another
what that other is for some reason unable to do. In jaundice, where
there is stoppage of the bile duct, the kidneys help out the liver by
excreting the bile. If one kidney is removed the other does work for
both, and the glands of the skin may help out the kidneys or _vice
versa_. Hemorrhage from the lungs sometimes occurs in suppression of
the menses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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