29$^ Mageiidie on Jlbsorption. 



To develope it after death, it was necessary to find a 

 membrane in the vessels of which a current could be es- 

 tablished which should imitate the circulation of the blood. 

 I at first made choice of an intestinal part ; but was obliged 

 to renounce my experiment on account of the extravasatiojn 

 which took place in the cellular substance, and because the 

 liquid found great difficulty in passing from the artery into 

 the veins. I next took the heart of a dog which had died the 

 preceding day, and forced a quantity of water at the tem- 

 perature of 30° Centigrade (86° Farenheit) into one of the 

 coronary arteries, the water returned with facihty, by the 

 coronary veins, into the right auricle whence it ran into a 

 vase fixed for the purpose; I then poured half an ounce of 

 slightly acidulated water into the pericardium. At first, the 

 injected water gave no signs of acidity, but at the end of 

 five. or six minutes it presented unequivocal traces of acid. 

 The effect was then evident for the small vessels of a dead 

 animal, and I had no occasion to recur to new essays, or to 

 sacrifice other animals to prove that the same effect exists in 

 living ories. The experiments related in my memoir on the 

 organs of absorption in mammiferous animals (mammif ires) 

 leave no doubt on this subject, according to the judgment 

 of the academy itself. 



But one possible objection remained to be removed, 

 which was, that the membranes which are permeable after 

 death, do not seem to be so during life ; in the dead body 

 the bile transudes into the peritoneum, and tinges with yel- 

 low all the parts which eoviron the gall-bladder, which ef- 

 fect does not appear to take place in the living animals; the 

 fact is true, I have witnessed it too often to be disposed to 

 deny it ; but it does not appear to me to be indispensably 

 necessary to draw thence the conclusion that the membranes 

 are impermeable during life; for if we suppose that the 

 sides (coats) of the vesicle (gall-bladder) in the living ani- 

 mals admit the process of the bile, the sanguiferous current 

 which exists in the small vessels of which these sides or 

 coats (parois) are principally composed, would carry off the 

 bile as fast as it impregnated them; this effect cannot take' 

 place in the dead body, since the circulation no longer ex- 

 ists to carry off the matter which the vessels imbibe. 



Besides, I have often observed that even in living animalSj 

 the membranes are penetrated and coloured by substance? 



