in the Intestines of living Animals. 4j 
adding bile to it out of the body, 1 was desirous of ascertaining’ 
whether this process could be detected going in in the human 
intestines}; and being in attendance upon a gentleman of an ad- 
vanced age, who had been six days without an evacuation from 
_ the bowels, confined to bed by the gout, I did not let slip the 
opportunity of his having a very costive stool deeply tinged with 
bile, to make the experiment. The excrement was put into 
water, and kept heated for three hours to a temperature of above 
100°. When the water was allowed to cool, a film was formed 
upon the surface, which appeared to be of an oily nature, and 
Mr, Brande ascertained it tobe so. The quantity was not great, 
but quite sufficient to ascertain the fact ; and next day the feces 
having subsided, the fatty film was much more conspicuous. In 
the Phil. Trans. for 1673, \p. 6093, a case is stated of a person 
who laboured under an indisposition, attended with sickness and 
vomiting. In one attack of vomiting, he brought up matter re- 
sembling tallow, four pieces of which weighed half an ounce. 
This process of forming fat in the lower intestines by means 
of bile, throws considerable light upon the nourishment derived 
from clysters, a fact well ascertained, but which could not be 
explained. It also accounts for the wasting of the body, which 
so invariably attends upon all complaints of the lower bowels. 
It accounts, too, for all the varieties in the turns of the colon, 
which we meet with in so great a degree in different animals. 
This property of the bile explains likewise the formation of fatty 
concretions in the gall-bladder, so commonly met with, and 
which, from these experiments, appear to be produced by the ac- 
tion of the bile on the mucus secreted in the gall-bladder: and 
it enables us to understand the following effects, which arose 
from the circumstance of no part of the bile passing into the 
intestines. 
A child was born, at the full time, of the usual size, and lived 
for several months, but never appeared to increase in size, al- 
though it fed heartily, had regular stools, and the food seemed 
perfectly digested. There was no bile in the stools, and the 
skin ‘was of a dark yellowish brown. I saw the child while it 
was alive, and was struck with its want of growth, and its having 
no fat under the skirl, which made it appear longer than new 
born children generally are. Upon examining the bedy aftey 
death, the only mal-formation met with, was there being no 
gall-bladder, nor any duct leading from the liver into the duo- 
denum. ; 
From what happened in this case, a supply of fat appears ne- - 
cessary for growth ; for the child was by no means. wasted in its 
muscles, which it must have been had the constitution not been 
supplied with nourishment, 
Animal 
