An experimental investigation of the physiological action of saline cathartics / by Matthew Hay.

  • Hay Matthew.
Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An experimental investigation of the physiological action of saline cathartics / by Matthew Hay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    dation. Its chemical composition, as Moreau has pointed out, clearly supports this beh^f. Unfortunately, Moreau has not furnished us with an examination of its digestive properties. What these are will again be discussed. In the meantime, I would advance this further argument in favour of the fluid being a true secretion; that m the case of certain well-known secreting glands, as the submaxillary and sublingual salivary glands, and the pancreas, Bernard,^ Heidenhain,^ and Bernstein^ have proved that a so-called paralytic but true secretion is produced by the division of all the nerves supplying these organs ; why not from the intestinal follicles after division of the mesenteric nerves ? These experiments with purgatives, after the method of Colin and Moreau, have since been repeated with extreme care by Yulpian * and by Lauder Brunton,^ by Bottger^ in the laboratory of Bern- stein, and by Brieger at the suggestion and under the guidance of Cohnheim, and invariably with the same result—the excitation of a profuse secretion in the injected loop. Lauder Brunton's experiments were professedly a careful repetition on the cat of those of Moreau and Yulpian, for the purpose of testing the accuracy of their results. He states his belief that the fluid secreted, on account of its containing little albumen, is a true intestinal secretion, and not a transudation. Bottger, in his investigation, used frogs and rabbits. The secretion, which was copious, was, as obtained from the latter animals, mixed with blood, and yielded a large precipitate of albumen. He believed that the results of his experiments were best explained by the theory of Carl Schmidt, as the secretion possessed the composition of a trans- udation. He apparently overlooked the fact that blood is not usually present in the purgative stools of sulphate of soda, and that its presence in the fluid he obtained would sufficiently account for the large quantity of albumen. Brieger improved upon the method of the others to the extent, that he washed out the loop of intestine before injecting the saline; so that the secreted fluid might be free from mixture with the remnants of partially digested food which were possibly present. The secretion obtained was yellowish in colour, and capable of digesting starch, and of dissolving raw fibrin, but was without action on boiled fibrin ; it contained mucous and epithelial corpuscles, but no hremocytes. The mucous membrane was pale and uncongested. The fluid, he concludes, s a true intestinal secretion. ^ Bernard, Lcqo7is sw Ics propy^ieUs physiol. etc. dcs Uquides de Vorganismc, Paris, 1859. - Heidenliain, Stud. d. j^hysiolog. Instit. zu Brcslau, Leipzig-, 4 Hft. ^ Bernstein, Sitzungsb. d. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig, 1869, S. 96, ^ Vulpian, Gazette mddicale, 1873, p. 300. Lemons sti7' Vapptctfcil vasomoteur, t. i. p. 458, ct scq. ^ Lauder Brunton, Practitioner, vol. xii. 1874, pp. 342 and 403. ^ Bottger, Uebcr d. physiolog. Wii-kung d. Ahfiihrmittcl. Inaug. dissert- ITalle, 1874. Brieger, Arch. f. cxperim. Path. u. Pharm. Bd. viii. 1878, S. 355.