OBSERVATIONS UPON FAT RESORPTION 355 



Finally, as 0. Cohnheim believes, the very existence in 

 the intestine of fat splitting ferments seemingly would be 

 inexplicable and superfluous, if it were true that the resorp- 

 tion is exclusively that of fat in emulsion. 



Histological Observations Bearing Upon Fat Resorption. 

 To Pfliiger's objections, however, Sigmund Exner 16 sug- 

 gests that histological examination always has made it look 

 as though a part of the fat is resorbed without being split. 

 "I have always regarded it as probable," says Exner, "that 

 fat is absorbed in part unsaponified, having followed since 

 the sixties a number of investigations conducted in the 

 Vienna Physiological Institute bearing upon the path of 

 resorption, 17 and having invariably found features which 

 upheld this idea. ... As the hypothesis that all fat is 

 changed into a soluble form before absorption and is re- 

 formed after absorption gained more and more adherence I 

 was forced to say to myself : If in the first place we see the 

 fat droplets (possibly, too, droplets of fatty acids) in the 

 contents of the intestine, in the rodded border of the cells, 

 in the protoplasm of the epithelial cells, and finally in the 

 chyle vessels, is it not more likely that all these droplets are 

 of essentially identical origin and that we are catching them 

 first before absorption and then step by step in their 

 progress, than that the droplets which we find within the 

 intestinal lumen are as yet to undergo solution, and that 

 those right alongside of them in the rodded cell border or 

 in the cell protoplasm have already reseparated from such 

 a solution, that is to say, have been regenerated? . . . 

 Solutions go through all forms of epithelium; fat in any 

 important amount especially through that of the small in- 

 testine; is it purely a matter of chance that no other 

 epithelium but that lining the small intestine is provided 

 with that peculiar border which in its construction from 

 parallel rods arranged in palisade manner cannot help 



18 S. Exner, Pfliiger's Arch., 84, 628, 1901. 

 17 E. Briicke, S. v. Basch, F. v. Winiwarter. 



