120 THE INTESTINAL JUICE. 



portion soluble in water behaves in precisely the same manner as 

 the mucous juice, which will be described in a future part of this 

 volume. Frerichs found from 2*2 to 2'6 of solid constituents in 

 the intestinal juice, in which the parts soluble in water amounted 

 to 0'87-g-, the fat to 0'195-g-, and the ash to 0'84; I found only 

 2'156g- of solid constituents. 



Frerichs has not succeeded in effecting a change in any of the 

 ordinary elements of food by means of the intestinal juice. Pro- 

 tein-bodies and gelatigenous substances remained perfectly un- 

 changed ; fat became disintegrated just as in all other viscid fluids. 

 Moreover, it exerted no special action on starch ; at all events, after 

 prolonged digestion at 37, no more boiled starch was converted into 

 sugar than would have been obtained by the action of animal mem- 

 branes, soluble albumen, casein, &c. Hence Frerichs is compelled 

 to deny to the intestinal juice any action as a direct digestive 

 agent ; but, on the other hand, the intestinal juice which I collected 

 from the loop of gut of the patient in our hospital, possessed in a 

 high degree the power of converting starch into sugar ; but 

 protein-bodies and fats, whether the juice were modified or not, 

 were so little affected by this mucus, that I must express my 

 doubts whether it exerts any digestive action on these substances ; 

 and the more so, since cubes of coagulated albumen and pieces of 

 flesh, when introduced into the lowermost of the fistulous open- 

 ings, were expelled from the rectum almost entirely unchanged ; 

 the fistula was, however, on the lower part of the ileum, and pro- 

 bably near the caecum. Bidder and Schmidt have, on the other 

 hand, convinced themselves, by the most striking experiments, 

 that this intestinal juice not only metamorphoses starch with as 

 great rapidity as saliva and pancreatic juice, but also that the in- 

 testine exerts as powerful a digestive influence on flesh, albumen, 

 and the other protein-bodies, as the stomach. 



In cats that had been kept for some time without food, the 

 duodenum was cut below the openings of the pancreatic and biliary 

 ducts and above a cork plug, which was inserted and strongly tied 

 into the upper end, so that the secretions of the stomach, pancreas, 

 and liver, were absolutely excluded ; in the lower end two cylinders 

 of flesh and albumen were sewed up in muslin bags, and pushed 

 down as far as possible, and the wound stitched to prevent their 

 escape ; the gut was then replaced, the edges of the wound in the 

 abdomen brought together, and in the course of five or six hours 

 the animal was killed. The muslin bags, which were found low 

 clown in the small intestine, appeared externally to be much col- 



