508 APPENDIX. 



We must not overlook this opportunity of noticing the 

 observations which Bidder and Schmidt have made regarding the 

 intermittent emptying of the gall-bladder. Magendie first made 

 the observation, that, after prolonged fasting, the gall-bladder is 

 distended with very concentrated bile ; Bidder and Schmidt have 

 now convinced themselves that the gall-bladder does not empty 

 itself immediately after the ingestion of food, but 2j- or 3 hours later ; 

 the mere distension of the stomach cannot therefore occasion the 

 discharge of the contents of the gall-bladder. It must not, how- 

 ever, be inferred from this circumstance that all animals pos- 

 sessing a gall-bladder only effuse bile into the intestine during the 

 period of digestion, and that at other times all the secreted bile is 

 accumulated in the gall-bladder. For far more bile is secreted 

 during the intervals between the individual meals than could be 

 held in the gall-bladder ; thus, for instance, the gall-bladder of a 

 full-grown cat cannot contain more than about 3 grammes of bile, 

 although the animal secreted in 24 hours from 30 to 32 grammes 

 of bile, and therefore far more than could be collected in the gall- 

 bladder, even with four or five emptyings after the ingestion of 

 food. And the fact is still more strikingly shown in rabbits ; the 

 gall-bladder of a rabbit weighing 1 kilogramme can contain at 

 most 0*469 of a gramme of bile ; but since this animal sends 

 7 grammes of bile into the intestine in one hour, it is hence still 

 less possible to conceive that all the bile must take its course 

 through the gall-bladder. 



(12) Addition to p. 105, line 14. After so many fruitless 

 attempts to establish on incontestable grounds the co-operation of 

 the bile in the digestion of the fats, Bidder and Schmidt* have at 

 length succeeded in submitting the question to the most exact 

 proof. We shall follow these investigators through the different 

 steps of the experimental proof by which they established the 

 point. Experiments on dogs, in which they formed fistulous open- 

 ings into the gall-bladder after having previously tied the ductus 

 choledochus, showed that the bile which is poured into the intes- 

 tine is devoid of any influence on the digestion of albuminous 

 matter and of starch. Animals, which had been thus operated 

 on, digested the same quantities of albuminous food as sound 

 animals in which the bile could run unimpeded into the intes- 

 tine, and in each case the process seemed to be equally per- 

 fectly performed. Precisely the same was observed in regard 

 * Verdauungssafte und Stoffwcchsel. S. 215-234. 



