SUGAR. 291 



of sugar in the injected solution, the absorption will be precisely 

 the same in loops of the most varied size, provided the concentra- 

 tion of the solutions be the same. 



These few indications are sufficient to show that the recognised 

 laws of physics are perfectly sufficient for the explanation of the 

 resorption of sugar in the intestine, and that we are not justified, 

 from the facts in our possession, in referring intestinal absorption 

 to special vital forces. Hence von Becker's persevering labours 

 have advanced us a further step in the knowledge of the physical 

 phenomena in animal life. 



Before we proceed to consider the relations of the fat conveyed 

 from without into the intestine in the process of digestion, we must 

 briefly direct attention to certain carbo-hydrates and non-nitroge- 

 nous bodies which have not yet been mentioned. To begin with 

 cane-sugar, Frerichs maintains, in opposition to Bouchardat and 

 Sandras, that this sugar is not converted into any other form 

 of sugar (as, for instance, glucose), either by the saliva or the gastric 

 juice. My own observations do not lead me to accord with 

 Frerichs 3 view. It was only recently that I found in repeated 

 experiments, that after rabbits had been fed with beet-root, glucose 

 was invariably present in the stomach and duodenum, while cane- 

 sugar was never found ; even when large quantities of cane-sugar 

 were dissolved in water and injected into the stomachs of rabbits, 

 glucose was the only kind of sugar that could be found an hour 

 afterwards in the stomach and in the whole of the small intestine. 

 Perfectly similar results have likewise been obtained by von 

 Becker in the numerous experiments which he instituted on this 

 subject ; it was only rarely that he could trace cane-sugar so far as 

 to the middle of the jejunum, even in those cases in which large 

 quantities of this substance had been introduced into the stomachs 

 of animals (cats and rabbits). Since neither the saliva nor the 

 gastric juice is able to effect a rapid conversion of cane-sugar into 

 grape-sugar (or glucose), it only remains for us to assume with 

 von Becker, than this transformation of cane-sugar into glucose is 

 produced by the action of the substances in a state of change which 

 are always present in the intestine. 



Sugar of milk appears, both from my own experiments and 

 from those of von Becker, to comport itself in the intestinal canal 

 in precisely the same manner as glucose ; it distributes itself very 

 rapidly throughout the whole of the small intestine, and in about 

 an hour after it has been swallowed may be traced as far as the 

 caecum ; but like glucose and cane-sugar, it occasions an intensely 



U2 



