viii] in the Eighteenth Century. 209 



he says, you ligature the duodenum just above the entrance of 

 the bile duct, you will find the food above the ligature in the 

 form of grey lumps, below the ligature in the form of a whitish 

 homogeneous mass. He adds the notable remark that bile must 

 have some other function than that just described ; for animals 

 deprived of their gall-bladder very rapidly perish, the exact 

 cause of their death not being clear. 



Turning to the pancreas, after remarking that the exagge- 

 rated views of Sylvius and De Graaf had long ago been refuted 

 by Brunner, he insists on the importance of the fact that its 

 duct opens into the intestine in common with the bile duct. 

 " All which things being considered, a part at least of the 

 "usefulness of pancreatic juice will be to dilute and soften the 

 " cystic juice * * * so that this mixes better with the food. 

 " Whence you may explain the hunger of the animals from 

 " which the pancreas has been removed, attributing it to the 

 " reflux of a sharper bile into the stomach." And he ends with 

 this saying, prophetic of the work of Bernard a hundred years 

 later, " There may be other functions of the liquid not as yet 

 "well known to us." Of the intestinal juice and of the other 

 later changes taking place along the alimentary canal, he says 

 nothing to which I need call attention ; he seems to think that 

 the chief event taking place in the intestines is the separation 

 and absorption of the nutritive constituents, prepared for this 

 by the action of the stomach and the bile. 



It will not have escaped attention that the effect of the 

 labours of nearly the whole of the seventeenth century and of 

 the eighteenth century up to Haller's time was on the whole 

 to depreciate the work of the stomach. In van Helmont's eyes, 

 the stomach was the great digestive organ, and the acidity of 

 the gastric juice was its strong hand. Succeeding writers like 

 Sylvius and Stahl insisted on the greater importance of other 

 juices, and almost all of them, even those who attributed con- 

 siderable potency to the gastric j uice, denied or at least doubted 

 its acidity. But the avatar of the gastric juice was beginning 

 even while Haller was writing his great work. 



Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur stands out as one of 

 the most striking men of science of the eighteenth century, and 

 p. l. 14 



