HUMAN CHYLE. 153 



I. THE CHARACTERS OF THE CHYLE. 



The chyle as it flowed from the fistula was an opaque milky 

 fluid ; when examined in bulk, however, the colour of samples was 

 found to vary slightly from time to time. Thus, sometimes the chyle 

 was bluish-white, at others it had a yellowish tinge ; the yellowish 

 samples were always found to have the highest fat content. In no case, 

 even after meals rich in fat, did the fat in the chyle separate out as a 

 definite layer like cream on milk ; after standing for 24 hours the chyle 

 remained homogeneous throughout. Munk and Rosenstein (26) observed 

 a separation into layers after their patient had been fed on mutton fat ; 

 these observers also noticed that the chyle lost its milky appearance 

 and became a translucent opalescent fluid after at least twelve hours 

 abstinence from food. I was never able to obtain the chyle in this 

 condition owing to the patient's objecting to remain without food for 

 the necessary period. The chyle collected before breakfast had a low 

 fat content which gave it a characteristic bluish-white tint, this, 

 however, was the nearest approach I obtained to a fat-free chyle. 



The chyle was without odour, it had a saltish taste and was alkaline 

 to litmus paper. On standing for a few minutes it clotted, forming 

 a bulky loose coagulum which, after a few hours, contracted down to a 

 small shreddy mass floating in the main bulk of fluid. Clotting could 

 be prevented if the chyle were received into a little potassium oxalate 

 solution as it left the body. If calcium chloride were then added in 

 excess of that required to remove the oxalate from the solution, the 

 chyle clotted in a few minutes. It has been stated by Mil Her that 

 chyle on standing in air acquired a reddish colour ; this has been denied 

 by Owen Rees (30) , who says that the appearance was due to the contamir 

 nation of the chyle with red blood corpuscles. Munk also, in the chyle 

 which he collected, failed to observe this alleged development of colour. 

 My own observations are in entire agreement with these two writers, in 

 no sample of chyle which I examined did a pink colour ever develop on 

 exposure of the chyle to the air. 



On microscopical examination of the chyle the fat appeared in the 

 form of exceedingly minute particles floating in the surrounding fluid ; 

 a few larger droplets of fat were also present but these were never 

 so numerous nor so large as those which occur in milk. A few 

 leucocytes and, after the examination of several fields, an occasional 



