450 OF ABSORPTION AND SANGUIFICATION. 



the circulating current, but that those which enter the Gastro-intestinal veins 

 are submitted to the operation of the Liver ; whilst those which are received 

 into the Lacteals are subjected to a kind of glandular action within their own 

 system ; the newly-absorbed materials in both cases undergoing considerable 

 changes, which tend to assimilate them to the components of the Blood. It will 

 be recollected that all the veins which return the blood from the capillaries of the 

 gastro-intestinal canal, converge into the portal trunk, which distributes this 

 blood, charged with the newly absorbed materials, through the capillary system 

 of the Liver. The agency of this gland was formerly supposed to be limited to 

 the elimination, from the blood subjected to its influence, of the materials of 

 the biliary secretion; but there is now evidence that the blood itself is changed 

 by its means, in a manner which indicates an assimilating as well as a depurating 

 action. The blood which comes to the Liver from the alimentary canal, is 

 charged with albuminous matter in a state different from that of the albumen 

 of perfect blood ( 167); and the assimilation of this would appear, from the 

 observations and experiments of M. Cl. Bernard formerly referred to ( 169), 

 to be one of the most important functions of the liver. So, again, the saccha- 

 rine matters which are brought to the Liver in the condition of grape-sugar or 

 of cane-sugar, are converted by its agency into liver-sugar ; a form of the sac- 

 charine principle, of whose presence the blood is much more tolerant than it is 

 of any other ( 45). From the saccharine compounds brought to the Liver, 

 moreover, it appears that Fatty matter can be generated ( 40); but as the in- 

 troduction of this substance into the bloodvessels ordinarily takes place through 

 a different channel, the action of the liver would not appear to be essential to 

 its assimilation, and it has been found by M. Bernard that oil may be injected 

 into the general circulation without exciting any violent effort at its elimination. 

 There is evidence that the Liver may be subservient even to the vital trans- 

 formation of the components of the blood. For it has been observed by Prof. 

 E. H. Weber, that, during the last three days of incubation of the chick, the 

 liver is made bright yellow by the absorption of the yolk, which fills and clogs 

 all the minute branches of the portal veins ; and that in time the materials of 

 the yolk disappear, part being developed into blood-corpuscles and other constitu- 

 ents of blood, which enters the circulation, and the rest forming bile, and being 

 discharged into the intestine. 1 And it is asserted by M. Bernard that the 

 quantity of fibrin is relatively so much greater in the blood of the hepatic vein, 

 than in the portal blood, that the metamorphosis of albumen into fibrin must be 

 admitted to be one of the functions of the liver ; 3 upon this point, however, he 

 is by no means in accordance with other observers. 



473. The whole Absorbent system may be looked upon as constituting one 

 great Assimilating Gland, dispersed through the body at large ; for it does not 

 differ in any essential particular from what the Kidney or the Testis would be, 

 if it were simply unravelled, and its convoluted tubuli spread through the entire 

 system, yet still all discharging their secreted products by a common outlet. In 

 the cold-blooded Vertebrata, we find the extent of its tubuli enormously increased 

 by the plexuses which they form around the veins ; so that the Absorbent 

 system appears to attain a relatively greater development in them, than it does 

 in the higher classes. But the difference really lies in the greater diffusion, in 

 the former, of the elements which are more concentrated in the latter. In 

 Birds, the plexuses are smaller, and we meet in them with the " glands" or 

 " ganglia," of which the Absorbent system of Reptiles and Fishes is completely 



1 " Henle and Pfeuffer's Zeitschrift," 1846. 



2 See, oh the whole of this subject, M. Cl. Bernard's Lectures on the "Functions of 

 Liver," delivered before the College de France, and published in " L'Union Medicale" for 



