342 DIGESTION. 



an undue prominence ; and its action upon other articles of 

 food, though not at the present day overlooked, does not 

 always receive proper consideration. We shall find that the 

 pancreatic juice has an important action in the digestion of 

 nearly all the alimentary principles as they pass out from the 

 stomach. 



Action upon Fats. Even before the publication of Ber- 

 nard's researches, it was pretty generally admitted that the 

 digestion of fat consisted in its minute subdivision and sus- 

 pension in the form of an emulsion. This view was adopted 

 from the fact that during the absorption of fats from the 

 intestinal canal, the lacteals and thoracic duct always contain 

 innumerable small fatty globules ; but the ideas of physiolo- 

 gists as to the particular fluid by which the emulsification of 

 fats is accomplished were not very well settled. The most 

 generally received opinion, however, was that this was effect- 

 ed by the bile ; but experiments on this subject were very 

 contradictory. The observations of Brodie, confirmed by 

 Mayo, 1 seemed to show that ligation of the bile-duct pre- 

 vented the formation of white chyle ; while the experiments 

 of Magendie led to a precisely opposite conclusion. 2 



Eberle, the author of a treatise on digestion published in 

 1834:, 3 who, it will be remembered, prepared an artificial 

 gastric juice by macerating in water the mucous membrane 

 of the stomach, 4 adopted the same method in preparing an 

 artificial pancreatic fluid. He made a number of experi- 

 ments with a fluid prepared by infusing finely divided por- 

 tions of the pancreas of the ox in pure water. The results 

 of his experiments with this fluid upon the fats foreshad- 

 owed the discovery of Bernard, though they cannot justly 



1 MAYO, Outlines of Human Physiology, London, 1827, p. 406. 



2 MAGENDIE, Precis Elementaire de Physiologic, Paris, 1836, tome ii., p. 118. 



3 EBERLE, Physiologie der Verdauung, Wiirtsburg, 1838. Longet and Milne- 

 Edwards refer to an edition of this work bearing the date 1834. The edition of 

 1838 is apparently nothing more than a reprint. 



4 See page 236. 



