370 INTERNAL SECRETIONS OF PANCREAS AND SPLEEN. 



if, therefore, the venous blood of the afferent channels should 

 happen to contain an unusual amount of oxidizing substance 

 through suprarenal overactivity, the tryptic disruption of pep- 

 tones would not, to say the least, be prevented; in laboratory 

 experiments the need of an antiseptic when pancreatic juice 

 is used is well known; we have seen that in the afferent ves- 

 sels, the fluids derived from the intestines had been saturated 

 therein with the -antiseptic secretion of the glands of Brunner 

 and Lieberkiihn, and it is evident that their influence would 

 normally continue in the venous channels; finally, the action 

 of trypsin does not cease when the peptone stage is reached; 

 it converts these into leucin, tyrosin, aspartic acid, etc., the 

 fate of which derivatives we have traced down to urea, the 

 end-product eliminated in the urine. 



The role played by the spleen in the pancreatic digestion 

 of proteids, and to which we add a prophylactic function, has 

 been so ably reviewed by H. F. Bellamy in a comparatively 

 recent number of the London Lancet 10 that we will utilize the 

 greater part of his paper to illustrate the various features that 

 appear to us to furnish a solid foundation, not only for the 

 views of Schiff and Herzen, but also for our own. 



The author reviews the history of the question as follows: 

 "Corvisart found that in dogs in full digestion there was for 

 a certain time a constant rise to maximum in the digestive 

 power of the pancreatic juice, succeeded by an equally constant 

 fall to minimum. The maximum was attained during the 

 eighth hour after the ingestion of a meal, the minimum from 

 the thirteenth to the eighteenth hours. Meissner announced 

 that in fasting animals the pancreatic juice possessed little or 

 no peptonizing power. Schiff, after a number of experiments 

 on such animals as rats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, and young dogs 

 or dogs of small breed, found that during fast the pancreas 

 really possessed almost no peptonizing power; the albumin 

 imprisoned in the duodenum remained there for whole hours 

 without dissolving, the infusion of the gland giving results 

 equally negative. On the other hand, in the case of ravens 

 and adult dogs of large breed the pancreas preserved during 

 fast a certain digestive power, even in animals in a condition 



10 H. F. Bellamy: London Lancet, Oct. 27, 1900. 



