100 THE BILE. 



soda, they say, is not pure, but a bicarbonate, and mixed with a 

 little potass. 



M. Raspail remarks, that we may defy a chemist to either verify 

 the analysis of Berzelius or Tiedemann and Gmelin. or not to 

 increase the number of indeterminate substances which figure 

 in them, and this the more minute he attempts to be. He 

 considers, with M. Cadet, that bile is essentially a soap, with soda 

 for its base, and mixed with sugar of milk ; and that the other 

 substances are all accessary. Thus, the bile of the pig is a soap 

 with scarcely any albumen or picromel ; that of birds contains a 

 large quantity of albumen, and its picromel has no sugar; that of 

 fish has no resin, and its picromel is very sweet, and slightly acrid ; 

 human bile has no picromel, and has the less resin the more fatty 

 the liver. As to picromel, he regards it as a substance to be made 

 at pleasure by mixing resin, sugar, and an alkali or acid. h 



Fourcroy first explained the chemical operation of the bile 

 in chylification. 1 According to Dr. Prout, during the precipita- 

 tion of the chyle and the decomposition of the bile, a gaseous 

 product is usually evolved, the mass becomes neutral, and traces 

 of an albuminous principle commence, strongest at a certain dis- 

 tance from the pylorus, below the point at which the bile 

 enters the intestine, and gradually fainter in each direction. On 

 mixing bile with chyme out of the body, a distinct precipitation 

 takes place, and the mixture becomes neutral ; but the formation 

 of an albuminous principle is doubtful, probably from the want of 

 the pancreatic fluid. k 



The bitter and bilious yellow matters pass off with the faeces, 

 while the alkali (soda) of the bile probably combines with the 

 acid, and contributes to the formation of the chyle. The sugar 

 disappears. The loss of the alkali, which preserved the biliary 

 yellow, bitter, resinous matters in solution, causes the separ- 

 ation of the latter; and Dr. Prout found their distinctive qualities 

 the more evident, the further from the intestine they were ex- 

 amined. 



It is no longer wonderful that in jaundice, so intense that no bile 

 is seen in the faeces, and, according to Dr. Fordyce, even in arti- 

 ficial obstruction of the choledochus by ligature, nutrition con- 

 tinues, though, no doubt, less perfectly than in health. For 



h 1. c. p. 451. sqq. 



1 Systeme des Connoissances Chimigues, t. x. p. 49. 



k Dr. Prout, Thomson's Annals of Philosophy, 1819. p. 273. 



