ORIGIN OF THE BILE. 145 



in passing through the liver or kidneys ; we find it 

 in every part of the body with the same appearance 

 and the same properties. These organs cannot be 

 adapted for the alteration or decomposition of the 

 substance from which all the other organs of the 

 body are to be formed. 



41. From the characters of chyle and lymph, it 

 appears with certainty that the soluble parts of the 

 food or of the chyme acquire the form of albumen. 

 Hard-boiled white of egg, boiled or coagulated 

 fibrine, which have again become soluble in the 

 stomach, but have lost their coagulability by the 

 action of air or heat, recover these properties by de- 

 grees. In the chyle, the acid re-action of the chyme 

 has already passed into the weak alkaline re-action 

 of the blood ; and the chyle, when, after passing 

 through the mesenteric glands, it has reached the 

 thoracic duct, contains albumen coagulable by heat ; 

 and, when left to itself, deposits fibrine. All the 

 compounds of proteine, absorbed during the passage 

 of the chyme through the intestinal canal, take the 

 form of albumen, which, as the results of incubation 

 in the fowl's egg testify, contains the fundamental 

 elements of all organized tissues, with the exception 

 of iron, which is obtained from other sources. 



Practical medicine has long ago answered the 

 question, what becomes in man of the compounds of 

 proteine taken in excess, what change is undergone 

 by the superabundant nitrogenised food ? The blood- 

 vessels are distended with excess of blood, the other 



