138 Van Helmont and the Rise [lect. 



The third digestion to which this duodenal digestion, by 

 which as we sometimes now say acid chyme is converted into 

 alkaline chyle, is the prelude, is that of sanguification, which 

 beginning in the mesenteric veins, is continued in the liver, 

 and completed in the vena cava, a sanguification by which the 

 chyle is converted into blood, into crude blood, into cruor and 

 into serum, not yet into vivified blood ; the cruor will later on 

 become this vivified blood, the serum being used for the forma- 

 tion of urine and of sweat. 



The ferment for this third digestion is furnished by the 

 liver, which thus supplies two ferments. One is carried to 

 the duodenum by the bile from the gall-bladder; and it almost 

 seems as if van Helmont accepted the view that was held by 

 some that the bile was secreted by the gall-bladder and not by 

 the liver itself. The other descends from the liver along the 

 mesenteric veins. And he notes that the sanguification of 

 chyle, its conversion into blood being a more exquisite digestion 

 than the acid fermentation of food into chyle, takes place, not 

 like that in one wide open cavity but in a number of narrow, 

 and yet not too narrow passages. 



It is worthy of notice that van Helmont, though well 

 acquainted as he obviously was with the medical literature of 

 the day, little as he might esteem some of it, and therefore 

 probably aware of Aselli's discovery, makes no mention of 

 lacteals. He regards all the chyle as being absorbed by the 

 veins ; and argues that since the chyle is not ready for absorption 

 until it has been prepared by the second duodenal digestion 

 there is no real absorption of food from the stomach. 



He has his views about the mechanism of absorption. He 

 relates an experiment to shew that salts dissolved in water will 

 pass through a membrane such as a pig's bladder; and he 

 contends that absorption of chyle takes place partly in the 

 same way that salts pass through membranes, by diffusion as 

 we should now say, and partly by minute orifices in the walls 

 of the intestine, orifices which while open during life are closed 

 at death so that no absorption is possible from a dead intestine. 



The refuse of the food, left after the absorption of the 

 nutritious chyle, passing along the intestine, meets in the 



