250 THE PANCREATIC JUICE. 



menters. Their researches have shown that the pancreatic 

 juice converts the starchy constituents of the food into sugar, 

 and that it emulsionizes fatty matters, i.e., it reduces them to 

 a minute state of subdivision, holding them in suspension. 

 The first of these properties it possesses in a much higher 

 degree than the saliva, and the second seems almost peculiar 

 to it. Whether it decomposes the fats which it emulsionizes, 

 has not yet been satisfactorily made out. 



This property of emulsionizing fat has been doubted by 

 Berard and Colin, who extirpated the pancreas from four 

 young dogs, two pigs, a goose, and a duck; they all 

 grew and lived to be adults, and the conclusion arrived at by 

 these distinguished physiologists is, that the pancreatic juice 

 is not essential to the absorption of fatty matters. 



Pappenheim and Purkinje, many years ago, arrived at the 

 conclusion that the pancreas as well as the stomach secretes 

 a substance capable of transforming protein matters into pep- 

 tone. Corvisart's experiments confirm this, and this author 

 thinks that the pancreatic juice is intended to act upon that 

 part of the albuminoid substances which have left the sto- 

 mach before being transformed into peptone. Keferstein and 

 Hallwachs contest this, and believe that the effects described 

 by Corvisart are due to putrefaction. Dr Brinton also finds 

 the action of pancreatic juice on albumen very irregular. Cor- 

 visart considers that Keferstein and Hallwachs experimented 

 with pancreatic juice secreted under abnormal circumstances, 

 and the irregularity in action which Brinton has noticed, he 

 explains on the fluid not being collected when the animal is 

 in the act of digestion, the juice of the pancreas from the 

 fasting animal having little or no power over coagulated al- 

 bumen. Funke agrees with Corvisart, and, on the whole, 

 the evidence yet afforded us preponderates in favour of a cer- 



