ITS ABNORMAL CONSTITUENTS. 51 



revulsory (antiperistaltic) motion of the intestinal tube, which 

 causes a regurgitation of bile into the stomach, and this is an addi- 

 tional impediment to digestion. Biliary matters cannot, however, 

 strictly speaking, be regarded as abnormal constituents of the 

 gastric juice, since they are never produced from the same sources 

 as that secretion ; they are, however, so frequently met with, that 

 I have made few examinations of human bodies, or even of recently 

 killed healthy animals, in which I have not discovered biliary 

 constituents in the contents of the stomach lying near the pyloric 

 end. 



The contents of the stomach, in post mortem examinations, 

 and sometimes also the matters which are vomited in cases of 

 gastric catarrh, are perfectly neutral or even alkaline on their 

 outer surface, which is turned towards the walls of the stomach, 

 while the inner parts often exhibit a very strong acid reaction ; 

 this phenomenon, wonderful as it appears at first sight, is obviously 

 dependant on the circumstance that there must simultaneously 

 have been a deficient secretion of gastric juice, and such slight 

 movements of the stomach as not to have sufficiently mixed the 

 contents with one another; and hence, either that the inner 

 portions have undergone one of the above-mentioned acid fer- 

 mentations, or that they have retained the acid reaction peculiar 

 to the food. 



It appears as if heterogeneous matters in the animal body 

 made a repeated circulation through the gastric glands, as they 

 seem to do through the salivary glands, before they are removed 

 by the kidneys, or undergo change in any other part ; at least this 

 seems to be shown by the experiments of Bernard,* who injected 

 solutions of sulphocyanide of potassium and of perchloride of iron 

 into different veins of the same dog, and first observed the forma- 

 tion of sulphocyanide of iron in the gastric juice. 



It is universally known that in uraemia, or after extirpation of 

 the kidneys, urea is secreted by the gastric glands. 



Since the time of Nysten (see vol. I. p. 166), urea has often 

 been found in the vomited matters in cases of uraemia, consequent 

 on Bright's disease or on cholera. Bernard and Barreswilf have 

 made two interesting experiments in reference to this point. After 

 extirpating the kidneys in dogs, they found that at the com- 

 mencement of the retention of the urinary constituents in the 

 blood, the gastric juice contained no urea, but a very large quan- 



* Arch. g^n. de M^d. 4 S^r. T. xi. p. 310. 

 t Ibid. T. xiii. p. 449-465. 



E 2 



