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.

    8/90 (page 216)
    freshly-prepared loops in the cat, and Heidenhain, who did not attempt to calculate the succus secreted, arrived at practically the same results as Gumilewski who did. Rohmann continued Gumilewski’s work on the same lines, but used nutritive sub- stances, viz., starch, cane sugar, glucose, and peptone. The absorptions of peptone were estimated by means of the polarimetric obser- vation of the solution removed from the gut, so that no high grade of accuracy was attained. Of the four substances used, viz., grape sugar, cane sugar, peptone, and starch, the order of rapidity of absorption was found to be that here set down. Cane sugar was found to be absorbed at about ten times the rate of sodium sulphate, and Rohmann considered this as evidence in favour of epithelial action, because C. E. Hoffmann, in experiments upon the dialysis of these substances through ox pericardium into water, had found that sodium sulphate passed through this membrane rather faster than cane sugar. The gut wall was also found to be more permeable to grape sugar than to sodium sulphate. As in the old experiments of v. Becker and Funke, it was found that with increase of concentration of the solution in the gut the absolute amount of dissolved substance absorbed increased, but with grape sugar he states that a maximum con- centration is reached at the level of 5 per cent, or 6 per cent., beyond which an increase does not occur. He also noticed that with all four substances the absorption during a second hour was less than that during the first. A year after the publication of Rohmann’s work appeared the first of Heiden- hain’s papers. A large part of the paper is taken up with a renewed histological investigation of the gut wall, which will be referred to incidentally only in the following pages. In the physiological section of the work we note the following :— The fact is clearly demonstrated that the main absorption of solutions from the gut cavity is by the blood capillaries of the villi, which form such a dense network immediately below the epithelium. The flow from the thoracic duct is but slightly increased when the whole of the animal’s small intestine is distended with fluid which is being rapidly absorbed, and if the gut is not distended no increase in the outflow of lympth is noted. Ginsberg and Wertheimer have also shown that it requires a great excess of sugar or indigo-carmine solution in the gut to obtain evidence of the presence of these substances in the fluid flowing from the thoracic duct. It is further demonstrated by injections of solutions of methylene blue into the intestine of the frog and subsequent microscopic investigation, that substance in solution can reach the blood vessels in two ways, viz., in the cement substance between the epithelial cells and through the protoplasm of the cells.