234 DIGESTION. 



subject, and by others who have experimented on the gastric 

 juice of the lower animals, that this fluid, if kept in a well 

 stopped bottle, will retain its chemical and physiological 

 properties for an indefinite period. The only change which 

 it undergoes is the formation of a pellicle, consisting of a 

 vegetable confervoid growth, upon the surface, some of 

 which breaks' up and falls to the bottom of the vessel, 

 forming a whitish, flocculent sediment. We have now a 

 specimen of gastric juice which was taken from a dog with a 

 gastric fistula in January, 1862. It has no putrefactive odor, 

 and is apparently in the same condition as when it was first 

 drawn. In addition to this remarkable faculty of resisting 

 putrefaction, this process is arrested in decomposing animal 

 substances, both when, taken into the stomach and when ex- 

 posed to the action of the gastric juice out of the body. 



There are on record no minute quantitative analyses of 

 the human gastric juice, except those by Schmidt, of the 

 fluid from the stomach of a woman with gastric fistula ; l and 



1 For analyses by SCHMIDT of two specimens of gastric juice taken from the 

 stomach of this woman, see MILNE-EDWAKDS, Lepons sur la Physiologic, Paris, 

 1862, tome vii., p. 42. 



In nine analyses of the gastric juice of the dog, when the saliva had been 

 previously shut off from the alimentary canal, Bidder and Schmidt found the fol- 

 lowing to be the mean composition (Die Verdauungssafte, Leipzig, 1852, S. 61): 



Table of Solid Constituents of the Gastric Juice of the Dog. 



Ferment, etc 17'127 



Free hydrochloric acid - 3-050 



Chloride of potassium 1-125 



Chloride of sodium 2-507 



Chloride of calcium 0*624 



Chloride of ammonium 0'46S 



Phosphate of lime 1*729 



Phosphate of magnesia 0-226 



Phosphate of iron 0-082 



26-938 



In another series of three experiments, in which the saliva was allowed to 

 pass into the stomach, the proportion of free acid was 2-337, and the proportion 

 of organic matter was somewhat increased. (Op. cit., p. 70.) 



