RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPLEEN AND PANCREAS. 371 



of complete fast which had digested a copious meal the day 

 before; under these circumstances, indeed, the infusion of the 

 whole pancreas of a large dog was capable of digesting from 

 50 to 60 grammes of albumin. In such dogs this condition 

 of weak digestion was maintained until toward the fourth hour 

 after the meal, after which time digestion proceeded very 

 much more rapidly, so that at the time of maximum the pan- 

 creatic infusion was capable of digesting from 50 to 60 grammes 

 of albumin. As regard cats and small dogs, he was able to 

 confirm the results of Corvisart. By these experiments, then, 

 the above-mentioned observers succeeded in establishing the 

 following two facts: (1) that the activity of the pancreatic 

 juice or of an infusion of the gland is not continuous, but in- 

 termittent, and (2) that maximal activity appears regularly 

 during the culmen of gastric digestion (from six to eight hours 

 after a meal), at which time it is very considerable." 



Passing now, for the moment, from the pancreas to the 

 spleen, he proceeds briefly to examine the behavior of this 

 organ in relation to digestive phases. "Lauret and Lassaigne 

 in 1825 discovered that the spleen began to become congested 

 at the moment when the stomach discharged chyle abundantly 

 into the duodenum; that this is, however, merely a coincidence 

 is shown by the fact that the congestion also occurs after 

 ligature of the pylorus. Dobson in 1847 discovered that in a 

 dog three hours after a meal the spleen is still as small and 

 as anaemic as during fast; that it commences to dilate in the 

 fourth hour after a meal; that five hours after it has attained 

 its maximal turgescence, decreasing afterward from the sev- 

 enth hour to attain toward the twelfth its minimal volume. 

 Landois in the same year found that in the rabbit the relative 

 weight of the spleen to the body-weight of the animal was 

 the same two hours after a meal as after forty-eight hours of 

 fast; that it increased considerably from the fifth hour, re- 

 maining high until the twelfth hour. ..... 



"The striking synchronism in the splenic congestion and 

 the presence of trypsin in large quantity in the pancreatic 

 juice or in an infusion of the gland was observed by Schiff and 

 caused him to repeat all his former experiments on the tryptic 

 digestion of albumins, this time on animals in which the spleen 



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