81 
transforms into peptones, a product eminently assimilable. These 
peptones still possess some, of the chemical characters of albuminoids ; 
they give, for instance, with nitric acid, a yellow precipitate of xantho- 
proteic acid, but they have lost the property of coagulating under the 
influence of heat or acids. Besides, when an albuminoid substance is 
injected into the veins of an animal, it is found again in the urine, but 
it is not so with peptones, which are absorbed into the economy, and 
of which no traces are found in urintj, a proof that they have been 
thoroughly assimilated. 
So far, feculent and albuminoid compounds alone have undergone 
the action of digestion, fats are intact. But when once it has been ex- 
pelled from the stomach, the alimentary bol2, softened, modified, 
reduced to the state of pulp, meets in the first parts of the small intes- 
tines, another juice supplied by a gland called the pancreas. This fluid 
plays in digestion a considerable role. Its ferment, " the pancreatine," 
possesses the property of completing the digestive action which began 
in the buccal and gastric cavities. It modifies not only feculent and 
albuminoid compounds, which escape the action of saliva and the 
gastric juice, but it possesses besides the exclusive power of digesting 
fatty substances. Uefresne, who made a careful study of the properties 
of pancreatic juice, attributes to three distinct ferments the threefold 
properties I have just mentioned ; A'mylapsine would luve the charge 
of converting starch into sugar ; Steapsi?ic would favour the emulsion of 
fats ; lastly, Myapsine would dissolve albuminoids. 
After having undergone the action of pancreatic juice, the aliments 
start on. their way through the small intestines. As they progress, their 
consistency increases, while in the meantime their mass diminishes, 
owing to the greater part of them being absorbed by the chyliferous 
vessels. The excrementitious portion traverses the large intestine to be 
evacuated per anum ; the absorbed portions pass through the mesen- 
teric glands to the thoracic duct, and are finally poured into the left 
subclavian vein, where they are mixed with the blood. They will here- 
after belong to that regenerating fluid, which enters every organ, 
through the circulation, distributing the nutritive principles to every 
texture, and becoming the source of every secretion. 
Gentlemen, in my quality of physician and hygienist, I do not 
