VARIATIONS AND FUNCTIONS OF BILE. 195 



and discharged, but furthermore that it be discharged into the 

 intestine, and pass through the tract of the alimentary canal. The 

 most satisfactory experiments of this kind are those of Bidder and 

 Schmidt, 1 in which they tied the common biliary duct in dogs, and 

 then established a permanent fistula in the fundus of the gall-bladder, 

 through which the bile was allowed to flow by a free external orifice. 

 In this manner the bile was effectually excluded from the intestine, 

 but at the same time was freely and wholly discharged from the 

 body, by the artificial fistula. If the bile therefore were simply an 

 excremeutitious fluid, its deleterious ingredients being all eliminated 

 as usual, the animals would not suffer any serious injury from this 

 operation. If, on the contrary, they were found to suffer or die in 

 consequence of it, it would show that the bile has really some 

 important function to perform in the intestinal canal, and is not 

 simply excrementitious in its nature. 



The result showed that the effects of such an experiment were 

 fatal to the animal. Four dogs only survived the immediate effects 

 of the operation, and were afterward frequently used for purposes 

 of experiment. One of them was an animal from which the spleen 

 had been previously removed, and whose appetite, as usual after 

 this operation, was morbidly ravenous; his system, accordingly, 

 being placed under such unnatural conditions as to make him an 

 unfit subject for further experiment. In the second animal that 

 survived, the communication of the biliary duct with the intestine 

 became re-established after eighteen days, and the experiment con- 

 sequently had no result. In. the remaining two animals, however, 

 everything was successful. The fistula in the gall-bladder became 

 permanently established ; and the bile-duct, as was proved subse- 

 quently by post-mortem examination, remained completely closed, 

 so that no bile found its way into the intestine. Both these ani- 

 mals died ; one of them at the end of twenty-seven days, the other 

 at the end of thirty-six days. In both, the symptoms were nearly 

 the same, viz., constant and progressive emaciation, which proceeded 

 to such a degree that nearly every trace of fat disappeared from the 

 body. The loss of flesh amounted, in one case, to more than two- 

 fifths, and in the other to nearly one-half the entire weight of the 

 animal. There was also a falling off of the hair, and an unusually 

 disagreeable, putrescent odor in the feces and in the breath. Not- 

 withstanding this, the appetite remained good. Digestion was not 



1 Op. cit., p. 103. 



