268 Mayow 



as it is probable that the nerves which are distributed 

 in great number in the pancreas, serve for carrying 

 nitro-aerial particles, which, finding a suitable vehicle 

 secreted by its glands from the mass of the blood, 

 are passed into the duodenum by the duct of Vir- 

 sungus for the further fermentation of the chyme. 

 For when that pancreatic liquid, full of nitro-aerial 

 particles, meets the chyme, imbued with bilious, that 

 is, saline-sulphureous particles, a very intense effer- 

 vescence must be excited ; and it is probable that 

 by means of this the concoction of the chyme is 

 completed. 



After these remarks as to the viscera had been 

 written, a treatise on the pancreatic juice published 

 by the eminent Regner de Graafc2iVCiQ into my hands, 

 in which that learned man most clearly proves the 

 existence of the pancreatic juice, and confirms the 

 use which I have assigned to it. But it is scarcely 

 credible that healthy pancreatic juice is of an acid 

 nature : nor is it likely that the effervescence taking 

 place when that juice is mixed with bile in the 

 intestines is caused by the acid salt of the pancreatic 

 juice meeting the fixed or the volatile salt of which 

 the bile consists, as is the opinion of the learned 

 author ; for the effervescence of contrary salts does 

 not seem suitable to the animal economy inasmuch 

 as it comes quickly to an end and is always ac- 

 companied by coagulation, as has been stated above. 

 Further, any acid salt mixed with a saline-sulphureous 

 liquid changes and destroys its saline-sulphureous 

 particles and coalesces with them into an, as it were, 

 dead and insoluble calx, as in the preparation of 

 lac stUphuris^ as also happens in the case of bile 

 mixed with an acid liquid. And hence it is that acid 

 salts are most suitable for allaying inordinate fermen- 



