CONTENTS OF THE LARGE INTESTINE. 



295 



regular, four-sided prisms, or with the thin rhomboidal or rectangular tablets of 

 cholesterine. They are identical with the crystals of seroline figured by Robin and 

 Ver-diel. 



There can be no doubt with regard to the origin of the stercorine which exists in the 

 faeces. We have found that, whenever the bile is not discharged into the duodenum as 

 is probably the case, for a time, in icterus accompanied with clay-colored evacuations, 

 stercorine is not to be discovered in the dejections. In one case of this kind, in which 

 the faeces were subjected to examination, the matters extracted with hot alcohol were 

 entirely dissolved by boiling for fifteen minutes with a solution of potash t showing the 



FIG. 81. Stercorine from the human fceces. 



FIG. 82. Stercorine from the same specimen after it 

 had been melted, placed upon a glass slide, cov- 

 ered with thin glass, and allowed to crystallize. 



The crystallization was very slow, occupying some weeks- 



absence of cholesterine and stercorine. In another examination of the faeces from this 

 patient, made nineteen days after, when the icterus had almost entirely disappeared and 

 the evacuations had become normal, stercorine was discovered. These facts show that 

 the cholesterine of the bile, in its passage through the intestine, is changed into ster- 

 corine. Both of these principles are crystalline, non-saponifiable, are extracted by the 

 same chemical manipulations, and behave in the same way when treated with sulphuric 

 acid. The stercorine must be regarded as a slight modification of cholesterine, which 

 is the excrementitious principle of the bile. 1 



We have found that the change of cholesterine into stercorine is directly connected 

 with the process of intestinal digestion. If an animal be kept for some days without 

 food, cholesterine will be found in the faeces, although, for a few days, stercorine is also 

 present. It is a fact generally recognized by those who have analyzed the faeces, that 

 cholesterine does not exist in the normal evacuations ; but, whenever digestion is arrested, 

 the bile being constantly discharged into the duodenum, cholesterine is found in large quan- 

 tity. For example, in hibernating animals, cholesterine is always present in the faaces. 

 The same is true of the contents of the intestines during foatal life ; the meconium always 



1 Our researches into the functions of cholesterine have left no doubt that this is an excrementitious principle 

 hardly second in importance to urea. We have found that cholesterine is always more abundant in the blood com- 

 ing from the brain than in the blood of the general arterial system or in the venous blood from other parts ; 

 that its quantity is hardly appreciable in venous blood from ihe paralyzed side in hemiplegia; and that it is sep- 

 arated from the blood by the liver. We have also shown that, in cases of serious structural disease of the liver 

 accompanied by symptoms pointing to blood-poisoning, cholesterine accumulates in the blood, constituting a con- 

 dition which we have called cholestersemia. This subject will be fully discussed under the head of excretion. For 

 a full account of our observations upon the functions of cholesterine, see The American Journal of the Medical 

 Sciences, October, 1362. 



