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If the lymph-nodes can conquer the germs and eat them up, the swelling goes down and the pain disappears. But if the germs, on the other hand, succeed in poisoning and killing the cells of the body, these latter melt down and turn to pus, and we get what we call a "secondary abscess."
As the invading germs pass into the body, they travel most commonly through the lymph-channels and skin; are arrested and threatened with destruction by the so-called lymphatic glands, or lymph-nodes. This is why, if you have a festering wound or boil on your hand or wrist, the "kernels" or lymph-nodes up in your armpit will swell and become painful.
And if we were to ask the question, "Upon what does their peculiar value to the body-politic depend?" we should find that it was largely the extent to which they retained their ancestral characteristics. They are born in the lymph-nodes, which are simply little islands of tissue of embryonic type, preserved in the body largely for the purpose of breeding this primitive type of cells.
The lymph-nodes or "settling basins" of the drainage area of the primary cancer are the first to become infected, probably in an attempt to check the invaders; but the spores soon force their way past them toward the central citadels of the body, and, one after another, the great, vital organs the liver, the lungs, the spleen, the brain are riddled by the deadly columns and choked by decaying masses of new cells, until the functions of one of them are so seriously interfered with that death results.
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