CHAP, in.] CORVISART'S RESEARCHES. 217 



Corvisart. He pointed out that this juice possesses extraordinary 

 power of digesting proteids at th,e temperature of the body, and that 

 it possesses this power in neutral, alkaline, and even in acid fluids. 

 Within certain limits he was correct in his assertion, though, as will 

 be shewn in the sequel, pancreatic proteolysis ceases in a too acid 

 medium. 



The energy with which pancreatic juice can act was shewn to be 

 indeed striking by Corvisart, who asserted that 15 grammes of fluid 

 obtained during the sixth, seventh and eighth hours of digestion, 

 from a temporary pancreatic fistula, digested completely in two hours 

 five grammes of blood-fibrin, and in four hours as much boiled blood 

 albumin. 



Corvisart found that infusions of the fresh pancreas made by 

 digesting the minced gland in twice its volume of water at 40, 

 for two hours, possessed in an intense degree the proteolytic power, 

 being able to dissolve from 40 to 55 grammes of moist coagulated 

 blood albumin. He shewed that the pancreatic juice and extracts of 

 pancreas not only dissolved proteids but actually converted them into 

 peptones having the characters of the gastric peptones. 



Corvisart further found that the precipitate produced by alcohol 

 in an active infusion of pancreas, and which is in main part soluble 

 in water, yields a solution which possesses, approximately, the same 

 power of digesting proteids as the infusion which had yielded it. 



The period of digestion at which an animal is killed, Corvisart 

 found, has a great influence upon the activity of the pancreatic 

 extracts, the most active being obtained between the sixth and ninth 

 hours after a full meal. 



Corvisart's Corvisart's results were, however, neither generally 



results con- accepted nor generally confirmed by experimenters 

 ^^ dic * d b y who attempted to repeat his observations. Thus Kefer- 

 stein and Hallwachs 1 and 0. Funke 2 denied the proteo- 

 lytic power of the pancreatic juice and of infusions of 

 pancreas, asserting that when proteids are dissolved it is in con- 

 sequence of a process of putrefaction. 



Meissner's Meissner 3 , however, corroborated the main state-fc 



observations ments of Corvisart as to the powerful proteolytic action 

 of the pancreatic juice and of infusions of the pancreas 

 of animals during digestion, but he fell into the strange error of 

 believing that a slightly acid reaction was absolutely essential to 

 pancreatic, as it is to gastric, proteolysis. 



1 Keferstein and Hallwachs, "Ueber die Einwirkung des pankreatischen Saftes auf 

 Eiweiss." Nachrichten von der Kl. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Gottingen, 1858. No. 14 (quoted 

 at second-hand). 



2 Funke, quoted by Meissner. 



* Meissner, "Verdauung der Eiweisskorper durch den pankreatischen Saft." Zeit- 

 whriftf. rat. Mediein von Henle u. Pfeufer, 3rd Ser. Vol. 7 (1859), p. 17. 



