266 



DIGESTION. 



was made on a pig, an animal in which there is an enormous agminate gland, ribbon- 

 shaped and over six feet in length. That portion of the ileum in which the gland is 

 situated was emptied, and about four and a half feet of it were isolated by two ligatures 

 from the rest of the canal. At the end of an hour the animal was killed and the intestine 

 examined. The surface of the gland was found covered with a layer of mucus, thicker 

 and more consistent than over other portions of the membrane. The only way in which 

 it could reasonably be supposed that this secretion was produced is by exhalation through 

 the membranes of the follicles, as there is no evidence that their contents are discharged 

 by rupture. 



FIG. 72. Isolated portion of the intestine, (Colin.) 



Taking only into consideration experiments upon the inferior animals, little definite 

 information has been obtained concerning the composition and properties of the intestinal 

 juice. We can readily see that this must be the case, since it has thus far been impossi- 

 ble, in observations of this kind, to fulfil the necessary physiological conditions. Farther 

 facts are evidently needed to harmonize the opposite results arrived at by different ex- 

 perimenters. It was the same in the progress of the physiology of stomach-digestion, 

 which was unsettled and obscure until the normal gastric juice was obtained by Beau- 

 mont. The following case of intestinal fistula, reported by Busch, has done much to elu- 

 cidate this subject : 



The case referred to was that of a woman, thirty-one years of age, who, in the sixth 

 month of her fourth pregnancy, was injured in the abdomen by being tossed by a bull. 

 The wound was between the umbilicus and the pubes, presenting two contiguous open- 

 ings connected with the intestinal canal. It was supposed that the openings were into 

 the upper third of the small intestine. At the time the patient first came under observa- 

 tion, every thing that was taken into the stomach was discharged by the upper opening, 

 and all attempts to establish a communication between the two by a surgical operation 

 had failed. At this time, the patient was extremely emaciated, had a voracious appetite, 

 and was evidently suffering from defective nutrition resulting from the constant dis- 

 charge of alimentary matter from the fistula. Having been treated, however, by the 

 introduction of cooked alimentary substances into the opening connected with the lower 



