ORIGIN OF THE BILE. 139 



with excess of their fluids, and if the too great supply 

 of food be kept up, and the blood, or other fluids 

 adapted for forming blood, be not applied to their natu- 

 ral purposes, if the soluble matters be not taken up by 

 the proper organs, various gases are disengaged, as in 

 processes of putrefaction, the excrements assume an al- 

 tered quality in color, smell, &c. Should the fluids in 

 the absorbent and lymphatic vessels undergo a similar 

 decomposition, this is immediately visible in the blood, 

 and the nutritive process then assumes new forms. 



41. No one of all these appearances should occur, 

 if the liver and kidneys were capable of effecting the 

 resolution of the superabundant compounds of proteine 

 into urea, uric acid, and bile. All the observations 

 which have been made in reference to the influence of 

 nitrogenized food on the composition of the urine, have 

 failed entirely to demonstrate the existence of any direct 

 influence of the kind ; for the phenomena are suscepti- 

 ble of another and a far more simple interpretation, if, 

 along with the food, we consider the mode of life and 

 habits of the individuals who have been the subjects of 

 investigation. Gravel and calculus occur in persons 

 who use very little animal food. Concretions of uric 

 acid have never yet been observed in carnivorous mam- 

 malia, living in the wild state,* and among nations 

 which live entirely on flesh, deposits of uric acid con- 



* The occurrence of urate of ammonia in a concretion found in a 

 dog, which was examined by Lassaigne, is to be doubted, unless 

 Lassaigne extracted it himself from the bladder of the animal. L. 



