260 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



intestinal enzymes. This property is not peculiar to the cells of 

 the gastric and intestinal walls, but is probably common to all 

 living cells. Thus after much research (which has certainly not 

 been useless, and is highly suggestive) the old doctrine of Hunter, 

 emphasised by Spallanzani, emerges, rehabilitated, from the attacks 

 of its opponents. Hunter's theory cannot, of course, be taken in its 

 original mystical and allegorical form, which is the habitual 

 disguise of such scientific intuitions as outrun experiment. 

 Fundamentally it amounts to this : the cause of the resistance of 

 living protoplasm to the action of the digestive enzymes must 

 be sought not in extrinsic but in intrinsic conditions, i.e. in its 

 intimate constitution. 



More recently Weinland (1902), starting from the fact that 

 the Ascarids find in the intestine the medium best suited to their 

 existence, has attempted to determine the intrinsic conditions that 

 render them refractory to the proteolytic action of trypsin. On 

 rubbing up these intestinal worms into a pulp, with successive 

 alcoholic extractions, he obtained a substance which he termed 

 anti-ferment, because it has the property of protecting the proteins 

 from the proteolytic action of pepsin or trypsin. According to 

 other work of Weinland, there is within the interior of the 

 epithelial cells of the gastric and intestinal mucosa an anti-ferment 

 with similar action to that of the Ascarids. This would explain 

 the special resistance of the epithelium to auto-digestion, not only 

 during life, but also to some extent after death. How then are 

 we to explain the resistance to auto-digestion during life in those 

 tissue cells which are digested after death ? It is not enough to 

 assume with Weinland that they probably contain an anti-ferment ; 

 it is necessary to prove that the latter is destroyed at the moment 

 life ceases. Such a demonstration is absolutely impossible, because 

 the method of extracting the anti-ferment begins by killing the 

 tissues in reducing them to pulp ; and if this pulp contains the 

 anti-ferment, as affirmed by Weinland, this would imply that it is 

 not unstable, but persists after the death of the cells. The true 

 solution of this problem would evidently solve the enigma of life 

 and death ! 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



For General Literature see Bibliographies at the end of Chapters II. and III. 

 Excretion of Bile : 



DOYON. Arch, de phys. norm, et path., 1883-84. 



BRUNO. Arch, des sciences biologiques de St. Petersbourg, 1889. (This admirable 



work also gives an exhaustive discussion of the digestive properties of bile.) 

 ODDI. Di una speciale disposizioue di sfintere allo sbocco del coledoco. Perugia, 



1887. Monitore zoologico italiano, v., 1894. 



The Literature of Intestinal Bacteriology and its Physiological Bearings is 

 reviewed in : 

 FERMI. Policlinico, iii., 1896. 



