328 ON ABSORPTION FROM 



Starling and Tubby. Colored substances, or potassium fer- 

 rocyanide, were introduced into the peritoneal cavity; the 

 lymph was collected from the thoracic duct and the urine by 

 means of a catheter introduced into the bladder through an 

 external opening hi the urethra. An extensive opening of 

 the abdominal cavity was thus avoided. " In all of the ex- 

 periments, the coloured fluid or characteristic Prussian blue 

 appeared invariably in the lymph distinctly earlier than in the 

 urine. . . . The lapse of time between the injection into the 

 abdomen and the appearance in the lymph was in all the ex- 

 periments approximately the same an average of fifteen 

 minutes. . . . On the other hand the time for the first ap- 

 pearance of the colour, etc., in the urine varied considerably 

 in the different experiments." Meltzer adds: "In the few 

 experiments I made by injecting coloured fluid directly into 

 the circulation, the colour appeared in the lymph before it 

 appeared in the urine; the interval for the lymph was ap- 

 proximately constant, while the interval for the urine was 

 quite variable between seven and thirty-four minutes." * 

 In view of this reverse of the result obtained by Starling and 

 Tubby, Meltzer has rejected the theory that the peritoneal 

 absorption takes place through the walls of the blood-vessels 

 and not by way of the lymphatics. 



The preceding discussion has led Starling f to repeat his 

 earlier experiments with due regard to the precautions em- 

 phasized by Meltzer, and he has failed to discover any fallacy 

 in them. He calls attention, however, to the necessity of 

 emptying the bladder at regular intervals of two or three 

 minutes by pressure on the abdominal wall, when the urine 

 is collected through a cannula inserted directly into the 

 bladder. Otherwise the urine is apt to accumulate in the 

 latter and only the overflow is collected; a delay is thus 

 occasioned between the secretion of a portion of urine and 

 its appearance hi the cannula. To this point I shall refer 

 again somewhat later. 



Meltzer, Ibid., p. 203. 



t Starling, Journal of Physiology, 1898, xxii, p. xxii. 



