500 



ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



is now 



387 



matters into sugar, which was commenced by the saliva. Bernard 

 maintains that it also exercises the more important office of emul- 

 sifying or saponifying the neutral fatty matters contained in the 

 food, by decomposing them into glycerine and their respective 

 fatty acids, and so rendering them absorbable. 1 But the latest 

 experimenters are agreed only in regard to the first result, and 

 the chief office of the pancreatic secretion in digestion still awaits 

 determination. 



§ 340. Peritoneum and appendages in Mammalia. — The abdo- 

 men, as a definite and circumscribed visceral chamber, is peculiar 

 to the present class: the heart and other thoracic viscera are 

 shut out by the complete transverse septum or ( diaphragm ' from 

 the major part of the trunk-cavity, to which the term ( abdomen' 

 restricted. The serous membrane called ' peritoneum,' 

 which lines this cavity, is reflected 

 from the walls upon the principal 

 abdominal viscera to some of which 

 it gives a complete, to others a 

 partial, investment. In the human 

 subject the peritoneum, as in the 

 section shown in fig. 387, passes over 

 the fore part of the abdominal aorta, 

 i, the postcaval, A, and the kidneys, 

 k, k ; but is reflected so as to inclose 

 the liver, stomach, spleen, and major 

 part of the intestinal canal : it is con- 

 tinued from the transverse fissure of 

 the liver upon the lesser curvature of the stomach to form the gas- 

 trohepatic omentum. At the level of the section figured, one part, 

 f, is seen passing forward from the left kidney to enclose the spleen, 

 b, and the stomach, a: the opposite border, e, is the part of the 

 lesser omentum inclosing the hepatic duct and vessels, c. Another 

 fold of peritoneum is reflected from the upper and fore part of the 

 abdomen upon the umbilical vein of the foetus, which afterwards 

 degenerates into the ' round ligament,' d; the supporting fold, g, 

 being continued into the suspensory fissure of the liver, and form- 

 ing its ' falciform ' ligament : other folds continued from the dia- 

 phragm upon the opposed convexity of the liver are its 'coronary' 

 and f triangular' ligaments. The lesser omentum, more properly 

 the ( mesogaster,' or peritoneal fold which mainly suspends the sto- 

 mach and conveys thereto its vessels, also covers and suspends the 

 spleen; and this part of the mesogaster is termed the s gastrosplenic 

 omentum,' of which, in Man, only the left or outer layer forms 



1 CLXIV". 



Transverse section of abdomen through the 

 first lumbar vertebra ; Human, ccxxxv. 



