INFLUENCE OF PANCREATIC JUICE 359 



of their predecessors. 28 In order to diminish, as far as 

 possible, the untoward effects of chilling which is unavoid- 

 able in intestinal operations, the experimenters made use 

 of a warm operating table made of a large tin box provided 

 with a heating coil, this enclosing the whole narcotized ani- 

 mal (cat) ; the exposed intestine was spread out on com- 

 presses wet with warm physiological salt solution, kept 

 moist with the latter, and replaced immediately after 

 application of the ligatures and injection of the fluid under 

 investigation, with the usual further steps. In spite of all 

 their effort and care the resorptive efficiency of an intestinal 

 loop thus prepared was so low in comparison with the 

 physiological effectiveness of the normal intestine, that the 

 writer has lost all confidence in studies based on the method 

 of tying off intestinal loops, and can only regret the heca- 

 tombs of animals which the method has cost and, in spite of 

 this warning, is likely to cost in the future. To-day, now that 

 Pawlow and London have shown us how we can arrange our 

 resorption experiments under practically physiological con- 

 ditions by means of the polyfistula method, this pseudo- 

 physiological procedure has lost all justification for its 

 continuance, in the opinion of the writer. 



INFLUENCE OF THE PANCREATIC JUICE AND THE BILE 

 UPON FAT DIGESTION 



We come now to the presentation of the important ques- 

 tion of the part taken by the biliary and pancreatic secre- 

 tions in fat digestion. That these two secretions are actu- 

 ally concerned in the process was proved as early as 1852 

 by Bidder and Schmidt, and is further indicated from the 

 observations of Claude Bernard, who found in rabbits (in 

 which the pancreatic duct opens some distance below the 

 common biliary duct in the small intestine) that after a diet 



28 H. J. Hamburger, Arch, f . Anat. u. Physiol., 1900, 433 ; H. von Tappeiner, 

 Zeitschr. f. Biol., 45, 222, 1908; T. Hattori, F. Hercher (Bleibtreu's Lab.), 

 Inaug. Dissert., Greifswald, 1905, 1907. 



