On intestinal absorption, especially on the absorption of serum, peptone, and glucose / by E. Waymouth Reid.

  • Reid, E. Waymouth (Edward Waymouth), 1862-1948.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On intestinal absorption, especially on the absorption of serum, peptone, and glucose / by E. Waymouth Reid. 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.

    3/90 (page 211)
    IY. On Intestinal Absorption, especially on the Absorption of Serum, Peptone, and Glucose. By E. Waymouth Reid, F.R.S., Professor of Physiology in University College, Dundee, St. Andrew’s University, N.B. Received March 30,—Read April 20, 1899. Introduction. Since the days of Lieberkuhn it has been the laudable desire of the physiologist to maintain the thesis that the process of absorption of solutions from the intestine is explicable upon some simple physical basis. To an assertion, however, that at the present day the details of the process are within our grasp, few who have studied the literature of the subject and the thing itself, will be prepared to give unqualified assent. Nor need it be matter for surprise that the question is still sub judice, for in addition to the difficulty common to all physiological problems, and most prominent in the one before us, viz., the elimination of factors unessential and disturbing, but present by the nature of the case, it must be remembered that any real knowledge of the physics of solutions is essentially of recent date, and that its application in physiological research has frequently, through misapprehension of fundamental points, tended not a little to confuse the issue. I deem it of little profit in this place to enter at any length upon the theories of intestinal absorption propounded by physiologists in the earlier part of this century, for not only was a knowledge of the physical condition of substances in solution then non-existent, but the very structure of the wall of the intestine was but imperfectly recognised. Rudolphi and Magendie were both of opinion that “ imbibition ” was the cause of absorption, while Tiedemann and Gmelin with, as far as one can discern, but little basis for such a theory, compared the absorbing villus to an inverted secreting gland. With the advent of the elementary knowledge of osmotic phenomena inaugurated by the researches of Fischer and Dutrochet, the rationale of the motion of solutions through the wall of the gut seemed, naturally enough, to have been definitely established, and an osmotic explanation in full simplicity held the field almost unquestioned for many years, and in modified form is current at the present day. Brucke, however, in 1852, still maintained the theory promulgated a century or so VOL. CXCII.—B 178. 2 E 2 14.2.1900.