294 CHYLE. 



intestine, and present small club-like dilatations. The lacteals are 

 surrounded at their origins by vesicles or cells which appear as if 

 imbedded in an indistinct fibrous mass; while nearer to the exterior 

 and to the peripheral investment of cylindrical epithelium covering 

 the intestinal villi, there lie the trunks of the minute blood-vessels, 

 which communicate together by means of a very fine net- work of ca- 

 pillaries. According to E. H. Weber,* there is a layer of round cells 

 situated immediately below the epithelium, which are collapsed dur- 

 ing fasting, and inflated like well-filled vesicles during the process of 

 digestion. All observers concur in the opinion that each individual 

 particle of cylindrical epithelium participates in the process of re- 

 sorption, and is filled with a granular substance which causes its 

 distension, and in some cases even a slight distortion. It is, how- 

 ever, more especially and almost exclusively during digestion that 

 this layer of round cells appears under the epithelial investment ; 

 some of these cells being then filled with a clear, transparent, 

 faintly yellow fluid, others with a granular substance. Thus we 

 often find a cell of this kind filled with limpid fluid situated on the 

 apex of an intestinal villus, and close by it another cell of equal 

 size, filled with granular emulsive matter. 



Besides numerous observations on animals in relation to this 

 point, I remember noticing this appearance most strikingly and 

 distinctly in the intestinal villi of a decapitated criminal, in whose 

 examination E. H. Weber had permitted me to take part. The 

 microscopical preparations made by Weber at the time have kept 

 so well, that they still fully testify to the accuracy of his observa- 

 tions, and show that the structures in question are neither epithe- 

 lial cells filled with fat (as was conjectured by Frerichs) nor fat- 

 globules merely adhering to the surface of the villi. The distor- 

 tion of the cells which Frerichs was also unable to detect, may 

 likewise be easily recognised in these preparations. 



The limpid contents of these clear globules, which are probably 

 the oscula of the intestinal villi, according to the views of the older 

 physiologists, can from their refractive power scarcely be anything but 

 fat) and this leads us at once to the hypotheses regarding the resorp- 

 tion of fat by the intestinal villi. R. Wagnerf assumes that the solid 

 neutral fats must be fused by animal heat previously to their resorp- 

 tion, whilst the fluid fats are resorbed unchanged. In order to explain 



* Muller's Arch. 1847, S. 399. [We may also refer the reader to Professor 

 Goodsir's remarks on this subject in his " Anatomical and Pathological Observa- 

 tions," pp. 5-10. G. E. D.] 



t Lehrb. d. spec. Physiol. 3. Aufl. 1845, S. 263. Anm 3. 



