CHANGES EFFECTED IN THE BILE. 125 



already mentioned, to the free acids, and to their alkaline salts ; 

 and if we treat these alcoholic extracts with ether, we find that this 

 menstruum not only takes up fat, but more or less of certain 

 substances which give the well-known biliary reaction with sugar 

 and sulphuric acid. 



That comparatively unchanged bile should be found in the 

 contents of the duodenum is natural enough, but I have always 

 been struck with the circumstance that biliary substances, and 

 especially the resinous constituents, should be found in the gastric 

 contents of slaughtered animals, and of men that have been sud- 

 denly killed. I observed this in a singularly distinct manner in the 

 gastric contents of two horses that had for three days been fed 

 upon starch-balls; the alcoholic extract of the gastric contents was 

 rendered almost as strongly turbid by acetic or hydrochloric acid 

 as that of the duodenal contents ; the precipitate, when examined 

 under the microscope, appeared in the form of small vesicular 

 globules grouped together like grapes, which dissolved in boiling 

 water, but resumed their original form as the solution cooled ; they 

 readily dissolved in the fixed alkalies and ammonia, as well as 

 in alcohol, but not in ether : the ammoniacal solution, on evapo- 

 ration, exhibited under the microscope dendritic groupings 

 similar to, but somewhat thicker than those of efflorescent hydro- 

 chlorate of ammonia ; the potash-solution, on the other hand, 

 yielded crystalline forms resembling the plantain leaf. The solu- 

 tions of this substance were precipitated by the basic acetate of 

 lead, but not by the neutral acetate or by tannic acid : as it pre- 

 sented the biliary reaction with sugar and sulphuric acid very 

 rapidly and beautifully, it cannot be doubted that unchanged 

 biliary acids at all events, glycocholic acid were here present 

 in the stomach as well as in the duodenum. 



The further we descend in the intestinal canal, the less of these 

 resinous acids of the bile do we find in the alcoholic extract ; but 

 a comparatively larger amount passes into the ethereal extract. 

 Frerichs has also most carefully examined the changes which the 

 bile undergoes in the course of the intestinal canal. We have already 

 remarked in the first volume, that it is chiefly in the small intestine 

 that the presence of the resinous acids of the bile can be easily 

 detected; indeed, near the duodenum we often find bile still 

 undecomposed, which can be recognized in the aqueous extract; 

 the fresh bile discharged into the intestine is very rapidly decom- 

 posed by the simultaneous action of the free acid, of the easily 

 metamorphosed protein-bodies, and of the temperature of the 

 animal body; hence we here find only those modifications of the 



