a. and sb. Also 7 lacteall. [f. L. lacte-us (f. lact-, lac milk) + -AL.]
A. adj.
1. Of or pertaining to milk; consisting of milk. Lacteal fever, milk fever.
1658. Phillips, Lacteal, or Lacteous, milky, milk white, or made of milk.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Lacteal fevers, a term used by medical writers to express what the women call milk fevers.
1802. Med. Jrnl., VIII. 443. Restoring a certain degree of order in the process of lacteal secretion.
1854. Owen, Skel. & Teeth (1855), 70. The lacteal organs of the dugong are placed on the breast.
jocularly. 1868. Daily Tel., 14 April, 5/6. She proceeded very quietly to give him [her infant] a lacteal lunch.
1882. Sala, Amer. Revis. (1885), 246. The animals [cows] … are driven home, there to yield their lacteal tribute.
b. Resembling milk; milk-white, rare–1.
1633. P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., II. xii. Like the lacteal stones which heaven pave.
1658. [see 1].
2. Of a vessel, etc., in the animal body: Conveying a milky fluid, sc. chyle.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 66. The Stomach and guts, and their appendent Vessels, the lacteal Veins.
1691. Ray, Creation, I. (1692), 66. There should have been some lacteal Veins formed.
1813. J. Thomson, Lect. Inflam., 357. Substances which … the lacteal absorbents refuse to take up.
1843. J. G. Wilkinson, Swedenborg’s Anim. Kingd., I. v. 144. They have lacteal vessels, or lymphatics.
Hence Lacteally adv. (Webster, 1864).
B. sb. pl.
1. Phys. The lymphatic vessels of the mesentery, originating in the small intestine, and conveying the chyle from thence to the thoracic duct; chyliferous vessels.
1680. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 290. How it should pass the Lacteals, or with the blood through the other small capillaries.
1691. Ray, Creation, II. (1692), 63. Driving by their Peristaltick Motion the Chyle into the Lacteals.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 17, ¶ 8. [Against vivisection.] He surely buys knowledge dear, who learns the use of the lacteals at the expence of his humanity.
1809. Med. Jrnl., XXI. 296. Air will be absorbed from it by the lacteals as well as chyle.
1822–34. Good’s Bk. Nat., I. 275. The vessels are called lacteals, from the usual milky appearance of the liquid they absorb and contain.
1885–8. Fagge & Pye-Smith, Princ. Med. (ed. 2), 169. The absorption by the lacteals of matters from the affected parts of the intestine.
† 2. Bot. The lactiferous ducts.
1672–3. Grew, Anat. Plants, II. iii. § 25 (1682), 68. The Lacteals of Dandelion.
