, DIGESTION. 221 



acter of the food. If an animal is fed on meat and fat, then the 

 quantity of food must be considerably increased after the operation, 

 otherwise the animal will become very thin, and indeed die with 

 symptoms of starvation. In these cases the excrements have the 

 odor of carrion, and this was considered a proof of the action of the 

 bile in checking putrefaction. The emaciation and the increased 

 want of food depend, naturally, upon the imperfect absorption of 

 the fats, whose high calorific value is reduced and must be replaced 

 by the taking up of larger quantities of other nutritive bodies. If 

 the quantity of proteids and fats be increased, then this last, which 

 can be only very incompletely absorbed, accumulates in the intes- 

 tine. This accumulation of the fats in the intestine only renders 

 the action of the digestive juices on proteids more difficult, and 

 these last increase the amount of putrefaction. This explains the 

 appearance of stinking faeces, whose pale color is not due to a lack 

 of bile-pigments, but to a surplus of fat (ROHMANN, VOIT). If 

 the animal is, on the contrary, fed on meat and carbohydrates, it 

 may remain quite normal, and the leading off of the bile does not 

 cause any increased putrefaction. The carbohydrates may be 

 absorbed unprevented in such large quantities that they replace the 

 fat of the food, and this is the reason why the animal on such a 

 diet does not become emaciated. If with this diet the putrefaction 

 in the intestine is no greater than under normal conditions even 

 though the bile is absent, it would seem that the bile in the intes- 

 tine exercise no preventive action on putrefaction. 



We must remember, however, that the presence of free acids 

 counteracts putrefaction, and further that the carbohydrates yield 

 free acids by acid fermentation within the intestine. It is there- 

 fore conceivable that to the carbohydrates, which, according to 

 HIRSCHLER, are capable of checking putrefaction without entering 

 into an acid fermentation, the antiseptic action of the bile is due. 

 It cannot be denied that the bile under ordinary conditions, with a 

 mixed diet deficient in carbohydrates, has a preventive action on 

 the putrefaction in the intestine. LIMBOURG has shown that it 

 acts in an antiseptic sense, so that the decay of the proteids, giv- 

 ing rise to simpler products less valuable, or perhaps even injurious, 

 in the organism, are checked. 



Although the question how the putrefactive processes in the 



