THE DEVELOPMENT OF TUBERCULAR MATTER IN THE BLOOD.

During the digestive processes the starchy, saccharine, and albuminoid
elements of food are dissolved, and the fatty matters are emulsified.
A uniform milky solution is thus formed, which is rapidly absorbed
into the general circulation; some of it passes directly through the
walls of the vessels into the blood, and some is taken up by the
lacteals and reaches the vital fluid by traversing the complicated
series of tubes known as the absorbent system, and the numerous glands
connected with it. The chief function of the starchy and fatty food
elements is to keep up the physical temperature, by being submitted to
oxidation in the organism; therefore it is not necessary that they
should experience any vitalizing change, but are fitted to discharge
their duties in the vital domain by simply undergoing the solution
that fits them for absorption. But the materials intended to enter
into the composition of the body must be developed into living blood,
in order to be fitted to become part and parcel of the organs by which
power is evolved, and through the use of which we see, hear, feel,
think, and move. This wonderful process begins and is carried forward
in the absorbent system, which has been described by Dr. Carpenter as
a great blood-making gland. But the vital transformation is not
completed until the nutritive materials have been submitted to the
action of the liver, and afterward to the influence of oxygen in the
capillaries of the lungs. The food that was eaten a few hours before
is thus converted into rich scarlet arterial blood, if every part of
the complex vitalizing processes has been properly conducted. But the
influence of oxygen is requisite, not only to complete the
vitalization of the embryo blood in the lungs, it is an absolutely
essential element in every step of the vitalizing process in the
absorbents.