or ABSORBING Vessels, in Anatomy, a name given promiscuously to the lacteal vessels, lymphatics, and inhalant arteries, a minute kind of vessels found in animal bodies, which imbibe fluids that come in contact with them. On account of their minuteness and transparency, they escape observation in ordinary dissection. They have, however, been detected in every tribe of animals, and, in the animals which have been examined, in every part of the body. Those which open into the stomach and intestines, and convey the chyle, which is a milky fluid, from these organs to the blood, have received the name of lacteals, or lacteal vessels; and those which open on the external surface, and the surface of all the cavities of the body, have been denominated lymphatics, from the lymph or colourless fluid which they contain. See Anatomy.