On the nature and source of the contents of the fætal stomach : being the substance of a paper communicated to the Royal Society of London in June last / by George Robinson.

Robinson, George, 1821-1875.

Date:: 1847

Credit: On the nature and source of the contents of the fætal stomach : being the substance of a paper communicated to the Royal Society of London in June last / by George Robinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$constituted by the impossibility of assigning their production to | any other organs, I am disposed to regard them as the secretion of; , the salivary glands, between the development of which and tha gradual formation of these matters a certain degree of connection. ' has appeared to me to exist. ^ Having thus briefly mentioned the facts met with in the courses of this investigation, and indicated the conclusions which appeared! y' to me to flow most directly from the consideration of those pheno- mena, I shall for the present abstain from any further inquiries intO' this department of physiology. But, before concluding this com- munication, I may be permitted to relate one or two additional observations, which tend to establish an interesting and important relation between two of the chief functions in the animal economy,. 1 viz. respiration and digestion. I have before had occasion to corroborate, from ray own obser-- vation, the statements of other inquirers as to the slight vascularity \ and torpid condition of the stomach during fcetal life. It became,. therefore, an interesting problem to trace the gradual development of its digestive power, and to ascertain the precise period at which i the effects of this power became perceptible. ' The contents of the fostal stomach were, in several of the fore-- going observations, tested by litmus paper with very different results, the gastric fluid being in some cases neutral, sometimes alkaline, ' and in a few instances feebly acid. As the tissues and fluids of the foetus, however, always manifest a strong tendency to acescent decomposition, and as the indication of acidity was generally noticed • in cases where some delay had taken place in the examination of the gastric contents, I am not prepared to deny the possibility of this acescency having been the result of chemical changes taking ' place after death. A far more satisfactory test of the presence of the proper gastric juice, and consequently of the commencement of its digestive function by the stomach, was, I thought, to be found in the chemical action of that secretion upon albuminous fluids. And, as a liquid readily coagulating upon the application of all the common tests for albumen exists naturally in the stomach of the mature foetal rabbit, a few observations upon these animals, per- formed at diflcrent periods after birth, promised to throw some light upon the subject. Observation 11.—Two rabbits from the same litter were exa- mined at the end of thirty hours after birth. In one (which, from tiic appearance of the lungs, had evidently respired, but which was found dead within a few hours after the presumed time of birtli), the stomach, both as regards its vascularity and the nature of its contents, precisely rescniblcd that of the advanced foetus of tlie same species. Its coats were pale, and the blood-vessels distributed through them scarcely perceptible : while the substance within ex- hibited all its usual properties, being the same green, transparent.$