The physiology of digestion : a review of the Leçons de physiologie experimentale appliquée a la médecine faites au College de France, par M. Claude Bernard = Lectures on experimental physiology as applied to medicine, delivered at the College of France by M. Claude Bernard.

  • Gilchrist, William.
Date:
[1859]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiology of digestion : a review of the Leçons de physiologie experimentale appliquée a la médecine faites au College de France, par M. Claude Bernard = Lectures on experimental physiology as applied to medicine, delivered at the College of France by M. Claude Bernard. 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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    the orifice of the pancreatic duct, which act like the pancreas in emul- sionising fat, and converting starch into glucose, (p. 427.) In regard to the action of the bile, there appears to be some degree of confusion in Bernard's work, for whilst at one part he speaks of the necessity of its acting prior to the pancreas, in precipitating azotised matters, a few pages further on, he speaks of it as acting conjointly with the pancreatic fluid, and forming a mixture, having the special and peculiar property of digesting everythiDg. Also, in relation to the principal chemical observation he has made regarding the action of the bUe, that of precipitating albuminous matters already acted on by the stomach, he says, at page 422, this precipitate is not formed in gastric juice, the secretion of wliich is excited in a fasting animal: at page 420, he would seem to contradict this positive statement by saying, However, it is necessary to know if some of the characters which one attributes to a digested matter, do not proceed directly from the gastric secretion; and at page 423, that would seem to indicate that the bUe precipitates pepsine. This important point (the precipitation of digested matters by the bile) has been most carefuUy investigated by Corvisart, and the result of the numerous experiments he has instituted is, that it is the bile itself which is precipitated by the gastric juice or the acid chyme the same opinion is entertained by Funke.^ The fimction of the bile has ever been a much vexed question, and in Bernard's work we do not find any nice analytical investigations which tend to demonstrate the part which this fluid plays in digestion. No facts are given to show in what particular it modifies the action of the pancreatic fluid; we are merely told that when pancreatic juice and bUe are mixed, a com- pound is formed which digests every variety of food. This is not say- ing more than has been already said iti regard to the pancreatic fluid, to which, it will be remembered, Bernard attributes the power of digesting fatty, amylaceous, and azotised substances. The action of the bile in digestion still remains, to a certain extent, an unsolved problem. The most trustworthy experimental researches (those of Arnold, Bidder and Schmidt, Kolliker and Muller), prove that ab- straction of bile through a fistula produces gradual emaciation, and, after a considerable period, death; tliat if, in such circumstances, the amount of nutriment be very much increased, emaciation does not occur, and the loss of bile is, as it were, compensated for, the animal gaining in weight, not by fat, hit by increase of miLScle, sometimes by feeding, the loss of bile may even be over-compensated (Kolliker). Now, when we remember that the greatest part of the bile re-enters the blood of the portal vein, this loss of weight and emaciation, and the eff'ect of a compensating increase of diet is explained, but the share which the bile has in digestion, in its interim residence in the intes- tine is not rendered more intelligible. On this point the exijeriments of Bidder and iSchmidt, and Wistinghausen, already referred to, in Corvisart, p. 30. 2 FuNKK,, Bd. I., p. 278.