372 DIGESTION. 



mals were fed on bread alone. 1 In the case of intestinal 

 fistula in the human subject, the evacuations which took 

 place after the introduction of alimentary substances into 

 the lower portion of the intestine had an unnaturally offen- 

 sive and putrid odor. In this case, as it was impossible for 

 matters to pass from the portions of the intestine above the 

 fistula to those below, the food introduced into the lower 

 opening was completely removed from the action of the 

 bile. 



So far as the digestion of the different alimentary princi- 

 ples is concerned, it has been shown that the bile, of itself, 

 has no particular action upon any of them. In the faeces 

 of animals with biliary fistula, the only peculiarity which has 

 been observed, aside from the putrefactive odor and the 

 absence of the coloring matter of the bile, has been the pres- 

 ence of an abnormal proportion of fat. We have observed 

 this in the faeces of a patient suffering under jaundice appar- 

 ently due to temporary obstruction of the bile-duct. 2 This 

 fact was noted in the dogs experimented upon by Bidder 

 and Schmidt. 



The various experiments which have been performed upon 

 animals render it almost certain that the bile has an impor- 

 tant influence, either upon the digestion or the absorption of 

 fats. The observations of Brodie and others, in which the 

 bile-duct was simply ligated, are not very conclusive, as the 

 disturbances produced by the retention of the bile probably 

 had an influence upon digestion and absorption ; but Bidder 

 and Schmidt noted in animals with biliary fistula that the 

 chyle contained very much less fat than in health. In an 

 animal with a fistula, and the bile-duct obliterated, the pro- 

 portion of fat was 1*90 parts to 1,000 parts of chyle ; while 



1 Op. cit., p. 218. 



2 American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1862. We obtained 

 from 941*4 grains of faeces taken from this patient, a cake of soap weighing thir- 

 ty-four grains. In an analysis of the faeces made nineteen days after, when the 

 patient had recovered, no saponifiable fat was found. 



