THE SPLENO-PANCREATIC INTERNAL SECRETION. 393 



digestion in 12 hours with pancreas from one in which the 

 vessels of the splenic hilum had been ligated: an experiment 

 repeated many times, and always with identical results? 



It is evident that, if as believed by Schiff and Herzen 

 the circulatory cycle must be traversed by the splenic ferment 

 before the pancreas can be influenced by it, this ferment will 

 merely pass through the pancreas without in any way convert- 

 ing trypsinogen into trypsin, and fruitlessly re-enter the splenic 

 venous current. There being no connection between blood- 

 stream and trypsinogen and none between the latter and the 

 splenic ferment, we are now reduced to either deny the need 

 of any converting agency, and simultaneously close our eyes 

 to all the experimental data adduced, including Popelski's, 

 which sustain the existence of some process which has imposed 

 the necessity upon him of accounting for results witnessed, 

 or seek elsewhere for an explanation of the phenomena re- 

 corded. Thanks especially to the labors of Langerhans, 18 

 Laguesse, 19 and Opie, 20 this task will be greatly facilitated. 



Laguesse having studied the islands of Langerhans in the 

 pancreas of an adult man (an executed criminal) and of a child 

 which had died several hours after birth without having taken 

 nourishment, and in the sheep, reached the following deduc- 

 tion, quoted from one of our own reviews of his work 21 : "Long 

 before the pancreas begins its function as a digestive gland 

 granules of secretion accumulate in the internal zones of the 

 cells; and, when these come into contact with the blood, a por- 

 tion of them appear as though dissolved, while in others the 

 granules are resorbed. It might be supposed, with some 

 reservations, that an internal secretion always exists in the 

 cell, very much developed, however, and preceding the ex- 

 ternal secretion in the foetus. Later, each cellular group would 

 be first full, then acinous, furnishing alternately an internal 

 and an external secretion." Opie refers to the observations of 

 Kiihne and Lea 22 in injected specimens, in which these in- 



18 Langerhans: Inaugural Dissertation, Berlin, 1869. 



19 Laguesse: Comptes-Rendus Hebdom. des stances et memoires de la Socle 1 16 

 de biologie, Paris, No. 28, 1893. 



20 Opie: Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, Sept., 1900. 



21 Laguesse: "Annual of the Universal Medical Sciences," vol. v, 1894. 



22 Kiihne and Lea: Untersuch. a. d. Physiol. Inst. d. Univ. Heidelberg, ii, 

 488, 1882. 



