368 DIGESTION AND RESORPTION OF FATS 



acids, 48 or whether finally an increase of the absorbing 

 activity of the intestinal epithelial cells caused by the bile, 

 should be taken into consideration, may remain where they 

 are. 



LIP^MIA 



Passing a step further, we may next consider the route 

 by which the fat passes into the blood stream, and the form 

 which the fat taken up out of the intestine assumes in the 

 blood. 



Resorption Path of the Fat. That a part of the fat finds 

 its way by the lymph paths and thoracic duct may be seen by 

 direct anatomical study of an animal killed after a meal rich 

 in fatty substances. Many observations, as those of Munk 

 and Eosenstein on a girl with a thoracic duct fistula, indi- 

 cate that at times the bulk of the fat follows this route. 

 Without question, however, a portion of the fat goes directly 

 into the blood stream. J. Munk and Friedenthal observed 

 after ligating the thoracic duct and feeding freely on food 

 rich in fat (cream) that the blood sometimes contained up- 

 wards of six times the normal amount of fat, so that, after 

 preventing coagulation by the addition of ammonium oxal- 

 ate, the blood on sedimentation became covered with a thick 

 layer of cream. 49 In the writer's opinion a study which has 

 attracted but little notice, made in Bottazzi's laboratory in 

 Naples, 50 should be regarded as of special importance to 

 the question of the route of fat resorption. From animals 

 during fat digestion two blood specimens are taken at the 

 same time, one from the portal vein and one from the jugular 

 vein; and these are compared for their fat content. Did 

 the principal stream of fat pass from the thoracic duct into 

 the jugular vein obviously one should always expect that 

 the amount of fat in the blood of the latter would exceed 

 that of the portal blood ; actually, however, the opposite was 



48 Cf. G. Billard, C. R. S'oc. de Biol., 61, 323, 1906. 



* J. Munk and H. Friedenthal, Centralbl. f. Physiol., 15, 297, 1901. 



60 G. d'Errico (Bottazzi's Lab.), Arch, di Fisiol., 4, 1908. 



