64 BILE. 



If these disputes amongst the first chemists of our time,, 

 regarding the constitution of the bile, should at the first glance 

 cause the faith of the physician in the extreme certainty of 

 chemical investigation to stagger, and should blight his hopes of 

 our ever attaining to an exact humoral pathology, let him care- 

 fully study the grounds of these differences of opinion, and he 

 will be convinced that he has no cause for doubting the accuracy 

 and certainty of chemical inquiries. He must especially bear in 

 mind that different chemists have entered upon the study of this 

 complex fluid from different points of view, without, as it were, 

 meeting one another half-way, and thus obtaining a general survey; 

 further, it must be recollected that the bile undergoes decomposi- 

 tion with extraordinary rapidity, and scarcely any chemist assumes 

 that he has employed perfectly undecomposed bile in his analyses; 

 indeed it has even been believed that the decomposition of the 

 bile commences within the healthy living body in the gall-bladder. 

 Moreover it is clear that by employing different methods of 

 analysis, we obtain different products of metamorphosis. Finally, 

 we must always recollect that the comprehension of the results of 

 the analysis the consideration of the objects perceived is always 

 subjective, that is to say, it is the result of an intellectual process. 

 Hence we see that even where all the facts were fully confirmed, 

 none of the opinions that have been expressed regarding them 

 have preponderated, since none of them could be made to harmo- 

 nize with all the results of different experimenters. This object 

 has. however, been attained, as we already observed in the first 

 volume, by means of Strecker's experiments, conducted under the 

 auspices of Liebig, although, as might be expected, there still 

 remain some few obscure points requiring further elucidation. 



In reference to the resinous acids of the bile, we have little to 

 add to what we have already communicated regarding Strecker's 

 investigations. Mulder,* however, still defends the opinion of 

 Berzelius, that bilin is secreted by the liver, but believes that it 

 undergoes a complete decomposition in the gall-bladder. Strecker,f 

 on the other hand, has extended his investigations, and has analyzed 

 the bile of various classes of animals ; and hitherto he has found 

 that the only difference in the composition of the bile of different 

 animals is in the varying proportions in which the taurocholic and 

 glycocholic acids (the choleic and cholic acids of Strecker) exist in 

 them. In the bile of fishes (Gadus morrhua, Pleuronectes maxi- 



\Scheik. Onderz. D. 5, p. 1-104. 



f Ann. de Ch. u. Pharm. Bd. 70, S. 140-198. 



