Reflections on Professor Rutherford's experiments on the biliary secretion of the dog / by A. de Noé Walker.

  • Walker, Arthur de Noé
Date:
1881
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reflections on Professor Rutherford's experiments on the biliary secretion of the dog / by A. de Noé Walker. 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.

    11/36 (page 7)
    I will begin with the experiment on hydrastin, because it bears out that which I hope I have made clear, viz.—That if the experimenter had succeeded even in some degree,_ in proving the action of a cholagogue in a really physiological way on a healthy liver, it would not prove how that agent would act on that same organ, not in a healthy state. Action of Hydeastin. Dog had fasted 17 hours. Weight, 131bs. 6oz. Two centi- grammes of hydrastin, tritarated with two centigrammes of bile, one centigramme of rectified spirit, and six centigrammes of water, were injected at two different periods, in two portions of the duodenum. The experimenter does not deem it necessary to test the hydrastin by placing it in the stomach of the animal. He prefers putting the dog in conditions thoroughly un-physio- logical, and then inject it into the intestine, as already and so often described. It is here again adverted to, simply to bring out in relief the fact, that one un-physiological proceeding necessitates another and consecutive one, equally un-physio- logical thus, e.g., when hydrastin is prescribed to a human being, it is not mixed with bile, spirit and water, and no one save a worshipper of erroneous academical traditions would assume that hydrastin not mixed with bile, spirit and water, and deposited into the stomach of a human being, there to undergo who knows what series of changes, would produce the same results, as when the same hydrastin is mixed with bUe, spirit and water, and injected into the intes- tine of a dog. To an idealist carrying out certain notions of his own, for some Association or party,this lack of analogy is of little, or perhaps, even of no consequence. In noting down a short summary of this experiment tor his employers, the experimenter says, Before the experiment was begun, it was observed that the animal was somewhat unhealthy, which accounts for the result being less definite in this than in the former case. The fact shown in Table IV that in Experiment XIII a dose relatively larger in propor- tion to the size of the animal than in Experiment XII produced a smaller effect on the liver, seems only explicable by the fact that the subject of the former experiment was, as already stated, in an abnormal condition.—British Medical Journal.—January 11th, 1879.