258 DIGESTION. [CHAP. xxv. 



wound. A dog, treated in this way, lived three months : at first he 

 became very thin, and lost strength : but he recovered his strength, 

 although he did not completely gain his condition. It appears, from 

 a private communication made by Schwann to Frerichs,*" that 

 that distinguished Professor was induced, by these objections of 

 Blondlot, to repeat his experiments, which he did to the number of 

 thirty, and he took the precaution of keeping a canula in the 

 wound. The animals died as before, but one lived a year, another 

 four months ; immediately after the operation they lost weight, 

 but after a time emaciation ceased, and the dogs recovered, but 

 never reached their weight previous to the operation. 



The results of these experiments denote that the bile cannot 

 be exclusively an excretion, and, taken along with the facts already 

 referred to, make strongly against this doctrine. But as the 

 excrements of all, or nearly all animals, and also the meconium, 

 or the feculent matter found in the bowels of the foetus in utero, 

 contain in certain proportion, the elements of the bile, we are 

 bound to infer, that a portion of the bile is thrown out of the system, 

 along with the refuse or undigested parts of the food. And that 

 only a portion of it, and that a small one, is thus excreted seems 

 evident, because the quantity of bile contained in the faeces bears 

 a very trifling proportion to the amount secreted. Thus, Berzelius 

 found only 9 parts bile in 1,000 parts of fresh human faeces ; if 

 we take the average quantity of the faeces expelled in the day 

 to be five ounces, this would yield about twenty-one grains of 

 dried bile, equivalent to 210 grains of fresh bile ; but the lowest 

 estimate of the quantity daily secreted by the liver is between six 

 and eight ounces, which exceeds that of the faeces discharged. 



If, then, it be admitted that only a certain portion of the bile is 

 excrementitious, it remains to inquire what becomes of the remain- 

 der, and what purpose it may serve? 



Liebig suggests that it is absorbed from the intestine, and carried 

 into the circulation, where, by chemical union with the oxygen 

 introduced in respiration, it forms carbonic acid, and generates heat. 

 The liver, according to this view, secretes from the venous blood 

 a material, which, on reabsorption, serves as food for the calorifa- 

 cient process. It is not likely that this absorption takes place by 

 the veins ; for if so, we should find the secreted material carried 

 back again through the very same vascular channels from which 

 bnt a short time previously it had been secreted ; an arrangement 



* Art. Verdauung, Wagner's Handworterbuch. This author states that Nasse 

 operated on a dog in a similar way, and that the animal lived nearly six months. 



