22 THE WORK OF THE DIGESTIVE GLANDS. 



conformity. The cause is to be sought for partly in the defects of the 

 methods, partly in the investigators themselves, who did not always 

 endeavour to give the requisite degree of exactness to their researches. 

 Thus, food was often administered in unknown quantities, of in- 

 definite composition, and under varying conditions of appetite or the 

 reverse. 



In our researches, to cjmpare accurately the work of excretion 

 under different conditions, we have bestowed from the first, a minute 

 degree of exactitude upon the experimental arrangements. As a matter 

 of fact, the course of the secretion when the same conditions nre 

 applied has now become an absolutely constant one. This, so to speak, 

 almost physical exactness of complex physiological processes imparts 

 a feeling of satisfaction to the experimenter which rewards him 

 for his many hours of perseverance in watching the glands under a 

 condition of activity. As guarantee for what I have said, I give here 

 two experiments on the gastric glands, taken from the work of 

 Dr. Chigin, and likewise two on the pancreas taken from that of 

 Dr. Walther : 



The foregoing results are .also represented in the following curves, 

 the time in hours being given on the abscissa, the quantity of 

 juice on the ordinate line. The curves read from left to right. 

 (Figs. 3and 4.) 



The results, naturally, are not always so concordant as those given ; 

 nevertheless, when such a correspondence is found in two experiments 

 out of five, it must, in all justice, be accepted as striking testimony to 

 the exact regularity with which the glands work. We have every 

 reason to believe that the existing deviations are to be ascribed to 

 differences in the conditions of experiment as yet undiscovered ; that 



