4:02 DIGESTION. 



case of this kind, in which the faeces were subjected to ex- 

 amination, the matters extracted with hot alcohol were en- 

 tirely dissolved by boiling for fifteen minutes with a solu- 

 tion of potash, showing the absence of cholesterine and ster- 

 corine. In another examination of the faeces from this 

 patient, made nineteen days after, when the icterus had 

 almost entirely disappeared and the evacuations had be- 

 come normal, stercorine was discovered. Taking the esti- 

 mates which have been made of the entire quantity of bile 

 discharged into the intestine in the twenty-four hours, by 

 Bidder and Schmidt, and Dalton, a comparison of the total 

 quantity of cholesterine contained in the bile with the quan- 

 tity of stercorine actually discharged shows a correspondence 

 which serves as an additional argument in favor of the view 

 that stercorine is formed from a modification of cholesterine 

 in its passage along the intestinal canal. 



These facts show T conclusively that the cholesterine of the 

 bile, in its passage through the intestine, is changed into 

 stercorine. Both of these principles are crystalline, non- 

 saponifiable, are extracted by the same chemical manipula- 

 tions, and behave in the same way when treated with sul- 

 phuric acid. The stercorine must be regarded as a slight 

 modification of cholesterine, the excrementitious principle 

 of the bile. 1 



"We have found that the change of cholesterine into ster- 

 corine is directly connected with the process of intestinal 



1 Our researches into the functiou of cholesterine have left no doubt that this 

 is an excrementitious principle hardly second in importance to urea. We have 

 found that cholesterine is always more abundant in the blood coming from the 

 brain than in the blood of the general arterial system, or in the venous blood 

 from other parts ; that its quantity is hardly appreciable in venous blood from 

 the paralyzed side in hemiplegia ; and that it is separated from the blood by 

 the liver. We have also shown that in cases of serious structural disease of 

 the liver, accompanied by symptoms pointing to blood-poisoning, cholesterine 

 accumulates in the blood, constituting a condition which we have called choles- 

 terasmia. This subject will be fully discussed under the head of Excretion. For 

 a full account of our observations upon the function of cholesterine see The 

 American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1862. 



