PANCREATIC JUICE AND SUOCUS ENTERICUS. 161 



when at length the juice contains little or no kinase, if now a few cubic 

 centimetres of pancreatic juice be poured in and left for half an 

 hour, a fluid will afterwards be secreted having much kinase. Boiled 

 pancreatic juice has not this effect. I must further add that this 

 peculiar physiological reaction to the ferments of the pancreatic juice 

 (whether to one only, or to all of them, remains an open question) 

 is extraordinarily sensitive. From the facts here communicated one 

 must therefore conclude that in the case of the succus entericus, the secre- 

 tion of the fluid part is more sharply separated from that of the ferment 

 than anywhere else. With regard to the watery constituents, we may 

 take it that every cannula which is introduced into the fistula, acts as 

 a crude indigestible foreign body, and excites a secretion of water, 

 merely with the object of being washed along the intestine. We have 

 already learned of analogous phenomena in the case of the salivary 

 glands. One may further assume that the severe diarrhoea which 

 occurs in certain acute forms of enteritis results as a consequence of 

 some powerful impulse to this water-secreting and cleansing function 

 of the intestinal glands. The flow is here excited by the extreme 

 irritation of the mechanical or chemically injurious contents of the 

 bowel. 



Hence the bile and the succus entericus have revealed themselves 

 to be adjuvants of the pancreatic juice. And in their action the 

 essential fact appears that their assistance is variable, being now greater 

 and now less. What is the meaning of this assistance, and why is it so 

 different and inconstant ? It was long ago observed that pancreatic 

 juice, secreted immediately after the formation of a fistula, often acts 

 very weakly or not at all upon proteids. It was therefore conceivable 

 that the operation might have caused some injury to the gland and 

 have brought about an abnormal condition in it. But, as has already 

 been related in the second lecture, Wassiljew and Jablonsky likewise 

 saw a very weakly acting juice in normal animals, under the influence 

 of certain diets. In this latter, there was obviously a purposive 

 physiological relationship. It was remarked in the experiments of 

 SchepowalinkoAv that the kinase worked all the more energetically 

 tho weaker in general was the pancreatic juice. It was therefore con- 

 cluded, that the proteolytic ferment in these cases, for some reason 

 or other, was secreted in the form of a zymogen. The experiments of 

 Dr. Lintwarew, who started with this idea, have fully confirmed the 

 hypothesis. A pancreatic juice, obtained from a temporary fistula in 

 an "acute " experiment, only dissolved fibrin after four to six hours in 

 the thermostat, and had not even attacked coagulated egg-white after 

 ten hours. But on the addition of some succus entericus the fibrin was 

 dissolved in three to seven minutes, and the coagulated egg-white in 



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