RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPLEEN AND PANCREAS. 377 



in mixing with the same pancreatic infusion that of a contracted 

 and anaemic spleen, in order to observe whether it would have 

 the same effect as that of the spleen dilated and engorged with 

 blood. Artificial digestions actually carried out with these 

 infusions gave enormous differences: whereas the pancreatic 

 infusion alone, or that mixed with infusion of contracted spleen 

 digested nothing or almost nothing, the same pancreatic in- 

 fusion to which had been added infusion of engorged spleen 

 digested rapidly and copiously; indeed, it had often completely 

 digested its dose of proteid by the time that the other two, if 

 digesting at all, had barely commenced. The mixed infusions 

 thus behaved in the same way as a pancreatic infusion taken at 

 the culmen of digestion. 



"A large number of similar experiments were made with 

 aqueous boric and glycerin infusions, each being double: i.e., 

 performed in two separate series of vessels, the one containing 

 finely divided fibrin and the other equal-sized cubes of coagu- 

 lated albumin. The results were always the same. . . . 



"At the German Congress of Medicine held at Strasburg 

 in 1886 Herzen exhibited several graduated flasks containing 

 the residua of fibrin and albumin in a number of his digestions, 

 the digesting liquid having been decanted and replaced by 

 alcohol. The physiologists who examined them all recognized 

 that the difference between the residua left by the pancreatic 

 infusions alone and those of the mixtures of the pancreatic and 

 splenic infusions were very obvious. In a private conversation 

 with Herzen, however, Heidenhain made the following criti- 

 cism: It is well known that the pancreatic zymogen is very 

 greedy of oxygen; on the other hand, the spleen during its 

 dilation is engorged with blood. The splenic infusions ex- 

 hibited were intensely colored by dissolved haemoglobin ergo, 

 the undoubted and considerable acceleration in digestion ob- 

 tained by adding such a liquid to another containing tryp- 

 sinogen could be quite simply explained by the rapid oxidation 

 of the zymogen at the expense of the haemoglobin. This 

 objection disconcerted Herzen in no inconsiderable degree, and 

 he lost no time in making it the subject of experimental in- 

 quiry. He at length succeeded in disproving it by the following 

 excellent experiment: The pancreas of a normal fasting dog 



