110 BILE. 



have passed from the stomach into the intestine. Although any 

 one of these influences, taken alone, would not be of sufficient 

 importance to affect the vitality of the organism, yet when long 

 continued and collectively, they may excite such disturbances in the 

 animal economy as gradually to destroy life. Hence if the absence 

 of bile in the intestine does not exert a direct disturbing influence 

 on the vital processes, it may indirectly lead to the destruction of 

 the organism, just as we see disturbances induced in the circulation 

 from very trifling mechanical deficiencies of the valves, which 

 indirectly, and perhaps after many years, give rise to fatal results. 

 Lastly, we have to mention a ground comparatively unimportant 

 in itself, which is opposed to the excrernentitious nature of the 

 bile, and in part explains the injurious effects which gradually 

 ensue when the secretion is altogether excluded from the intestine ; 

 we refer to the resorption of certain constituents of the bile a 

 circumstance which has been very prominently put forward by 

 Liebig. It has been already mentioned that we are unable to 

 detect any traces of resorbed bile either in the chyle or in the 

 portal blood, but that a careful examination of the contents of the 

 bowel, in various portions of the whole intestinal tract from 

 above downwards, almost necessarily leads us to adopt the view 

 that the greater part of the bile is again resorbed as it passes 

 through the intestine, and is returned to the general mass of the 

 fluids. If a circuit of the bile from the liver through the intestine, 

 and from thence back into the liver, appear at first sight objectless 

 or superfluous, teleological grounds should not restrain us from 

 the recognition of positive facts, especially when we are still very 

 far from being able to master the aims of nature or her method of 

 arrangement. The chief biliary constituents which are resorbed, 

 are the soluble salts and the cholic acid liberated from its adjunct. 

 1$, as we have previously endeavoured to show, this acid is produced 

 from fat and sugar, or solely from fat, it would be teleologically 

 just as difficult to understand why this important element of 

 nutrition or supporter of respiration, almost immediately after 

 being taken, should again be given off to the external world. 

 Whether the cholic acid be formed from fat or not, it does not at 

 all possess the chemical constitution which true excrementitious 

 substances usually present. In our general consideration of the 

 animal substrata (see vol. i., p. 28), we have already mentioned 

 that there must always be a correspondence between the chemical 

 and the physiological qualities of a body. Now, in its chemical 

 qualities, and especially in the numerical relations of its atomic 



