CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 25 



mineral ingredients for the carrying on of the process 

 with the digested fat in the intestinal canal; if the 

 phosphate be wanting in the food, the bile which always 

 contains notable quantities, will supply it [and it is to 

 this action of the phosphate in bile that any influence 

 upon fatty acids which it possesses is due, the action 

 upon neutral fats formerly ascribed to it being an 

 erroneous conception]. The anomaly in the above- 

 mentioned diseases is the persistence of the fatty 

 emulsion in the arterial blood, whereby an obstruction 

 of the circulation and consequent effusion (of blood, 

 serum, fatty and fibrinous serum, as in apoplexy, 

 dropsy, chylous urine, and other diseases) is produced. 



Fat having been frequently found in degenerating 

 tissues, deposited in a visible manner, in parts where 

 healthy structure shows no visible fat, microscopic 

 anatomists admitted a particular fatty degeneration, in 

 which fat in excess assumed the place of albuminous 

 matters. The heart was supposed to be particularly 

 subject to this disease, to which, however, all other 

 tissues paid tribute. This doctrine, however, is at pre- 

 sent in a very unsatisfactory state, and requires much 

 elucidation by researches conducted upon mathematical 

 principles. That fatty degeneration so called may be 

 a very complicated chemical disorder, I showed many 

 years ago by the demonstration of changes in the 

 myochrome of the muscles of the heart, which produced 

 a green granular pigment.* 



Chyle is the fluid which the lymphatic vessels of the cn y ie 



* See ' Trans, of the Path. Soc.,' vol. vi, 1856, p. 141, and ' Quart. 

 Mic. Journ.,' vol. iv, 1856, p. 111. 



