NORMAL EXCREMENTS. 141 



no improbability in the supposition that sugar is also separated by 

 the gastric glands as well as by the salivary glands from the 

 diabetic blood. 



Nasse* has observed a remarkable case in which large quanti- 

 ties of fat were vomited. No evidence could be adduced to show 

 that the fat had been introduced from without into the stomach. 



Although the general character of the solid excrements in the 

 normal state must be sufficiently obvious, from the above sketch 

 of the changes which the individual substances undergo in the 

 intestinal canal till they reach the rectum, we must return to the 

 subject for the purpose of considering the pathological relations of 

 the intestinal excretions. Important as is the investigation of this 

 subject for physiologists, and especially for physicians, our inves- 

 tigations regarding it are as yet few and of doubtful accuracy. 

 The analysis of the solid excrements is, however, attended with so 

 many difficulties, and is so disgusting a task, that we find it 

 exciting the complaints even of a Berzelius. Putting out of the 

 question the repugnance which must be overcome before we can 

 handle and apply heat to such matters, the extreme varieties which 

 the excrements present according to the nature of the food that 

 has been taken, and the great facility with which decomposition 

 extends in such masses, we are hindered from making a tolerably 

 correct analysis, by the circumstance that all solutions pass in a 

 turbid state through the filter, and that the decomposed biliary 

 constituents distribute themselves through all menstrua, so that 

 we cannot readily extract a substance to which some decomposed 

 bile-pigment or putrid biliary matter does not adhere. 



An adult male, in a state of health, living on a mixed diet, 

 usually discharges in the course of twenty-four hours from 120 to 

 180 grammes of semi-solid brown masses, whose unpleasant odour 

 seems from Valentin's experiments to be far more dependent on 

 decomposed constituents of the bile than on the remains of the 

 food. These masses contain about 25^ of solid constituents, so 

 that from 30 to 45 grammes of solid dry matter are daily carried 

 off in the intestinal evacuations of a healthy man living on a 

 mixed diet. 



As, in our remarks on the contents of the large intestine, we 

 have at the same time considered the constituents of the faeces, 

 we now proceed to point out the differences which the excrements 

 present under special physiological and pathological conditions. 



It is almost unnecessary to introduce the remark that indi- 

 * Med. Corresponzbl. rh. u. westph. Aerzte, 1844, Nr. 14. 



