ON THE ACTION OF MERCURY ON THE BILIARY SECRETION. 187 
Report of the Edinburgh Committee on the Action of Mercury on the 
Biliary Secretion. By J. Hucues Bennett, M.D., F.R.S.E., 
Chairman and Reporter. 
Ar the Meeting of the Association in Dundee (1867), I read as a communica- 
tion some of the results arrived at by a Committee which had been in- 
vestigating the action of mercury as a cholagogue. The inquiry originated 
in a suggestion made by myself, in the annual address in medicine I delivered 
to the British Medical Association at Chester in 1866. The physiological 
department of Section D considered the results so interesting and important 
that a grant of money was voted in aid of the Committee’s researches, with 
the understanding that a full report was to be made on the whole inquiry 
at the next Meeting of the Association to be held in Norwich. The Com- 
mittee consisted of Dr. Hughes Bennett, Professor of the Institutes of Medic‘ne 
and Physiology in the University of Edinburgh, the Chairman and Reporter, 
Dr. Christison, Professor of Materia Medica, Dr. Maclagan, Professor of 
Medical Jurisprudence, Dr. James Rogers, formerly of St. Petersburg, Dr. 
W. Rutherford, assistant to the Professor of Physiology, Dr. Gamgce, 
assistant to the Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, and Dr. Fraser, assistant 
to the Professor of Materia Medica, Edinburgh. 
The first meeting of the Committee was held November 16th, 1866. On 
proceeding to consider by what method the action of mercury on the biliary se- 
cretion was to be accurately ascertained, the conclusion was arrived at that no 
kind of examination of the feces could yield trustworthy results. Supposing 
that the chief and characteristic constituents of the bile found their way into 
the alvine evacuations unchanged, imperfection in the analytical methods at 
our disposal render their quantitative analysis impossible. The plan of 
- ascertaining bile-acids indirectly by means of nitrogen and sulphur determina- 
tions of the alcoholic extract, while most unsatisfactory in the case of pure 
bile, is still more so when applied to the alcoholic extract of feces. The 
method of Professor Hoppe-Seyler of Tiibingen, who calculated the amount 
of bile-acids from the effect which their solutions exert upon the ray of 
polarized light, presents such complexity and difficulty as to render its 
systematic employment in any series of analyses altogether inapplicable. As 
to the colouring-matters of bile, there is no direct method known by which 
they can be estimated. But it was further argued that, did we even possess 
proper means of estimating the bile-products, it is only a small portion of 
such as are secreted by the liver which can be found in the alvine discharges, 
Bidder and Schmidt ascertained that the amount of unoxidized sulphur in 
them only represented one-eighth part of the total sulphur which the liver 
secretes, and that of the other constituents of the bile the larger proportion 
are absorbed. Indeed the utter impossibility of detecting the constituents 
of bile in the faeces is admitted by one of the most reliable physiological chemists 
of Europe, viz. Professor Hoppe-Seyler. That under the influence of purga- 
tives unchanged bile is occasionally discharged from the bowel is true ; but 
this furnishes no proof of any increase of that secretion ; for under ordinary 
circumstances it is decomposed and absorbed in the alimentary canal, and 
any cause which increases the rapidity of its passage there, must render ab- 
sorption and decomposition less complete. 
As it was evident that no accurate information concerning the amount of 
bile secreted by the liver was to be obtained by an examination of the feces, 
the Committee arrived at the conclusion that the formation of biliary fistulee 
in living animals, and collecting the bile directly through such fistulee from 
