296 PHYSIOLOGY OF ALIMENTATION. 



tained a maximum of 4J percent fat. When mutton-tallow 

 was fed a maximum of 3.8 percent fat in the lymph was not 

 reached until the seventh or eighth hour. The consump- 

 tion of a fat melting at 53 C. did not lead to more than a 

 milkiness of the lymph in the fifth to the sixth hour (only 

 0.7 percent fat), which continued with a progressive fall in 

 the percentage of fat until the thirteenth hour. 



This is, perhaps, the best place at which to discuss the 

 importance of the bile and the pancreas in the absorption 

 of fats. This question is of clinical moment, for a de- 

 ficient secretion or total lack of bile or pancreatic juice is 

 encountered in a number of pathological conditions. All 

 authors are agreed that when experimentally or through 

 pathological states the bile is prevented from entering the 

 duodenum the fats are much less perfectly absorbed than 

 under normal circumstances. This fact was recognized half a 

 century ago by BIDDER and SCHMIDT, and has since then been 

 corroborated and amplified by a score of investigators. The 

 exact amount of fat absorbed by men or animals when no 

 bile enters the intestine is subject to great variation, so that 

 it is not surprising that the figures of different students of 

 the question vary greatly. ^It is ordinarily stated that less* 

 than half of the fat which under normal circumstances 

 readily disappears from the alimentary tract is absorbed 

 when no bile is present 7 . The highest figures ever attained 

 are the disappearance of 70 percent of the fat against 95 

 percent in normal animals as (determined by analysis of the 

 faeces. The character of the consumed fat plays an im- 

 portant role. A fat witfi a low melting-point is more readily 

 absorbed than one with a higher one, just as under normal 

 circumstances. 1 MUNK found that the absorption of mutton- 

 tallow, for example, was interfered with twice as much as 

 the absorption of pork-fat. A further interesting fact which 

 at present still lacks an explanation is that the v proportion 



1 MUNK: Ergebnisse d. PhysioL, 1902, 1, Ite Abth., p. 324. 



