STOMACHIC ABSORPTION, 
103 
nervous influence, seeing we have obtained an analogous 
exudation, though in a less degree, by section of the pneumo- 
gastric nerves and great sympathetic, performed in the 
region of the trachea. 
M. H. Bouley has introduced into this subject the special 
notion, contrary to al] evidence, that the stomach of the horse 
is not an absorbent organ ; he views it exclusively as essentially 
an organ of digestion. The Italian savans have received the 
opinion of M. Bouley as it becomes philosophers to receive 
fresh facts. They have betaken themselves to experimenta- 
tion ; they have repeated the experiments performed at 
Alfort, and, in their hands the results being different, they 
have again repeated their own experiments, and so have ad- 
vanced a step further than the professors at Alfort ; they 
have varied their experiments, and after all have come to this 
conclusion : — the stomach of the horse absorbs . 
According to M. Bouley’s notion, absorption is not pre- 
vented from taking place, because the pneumogastric nerve 
exerts no influence on the stomach, so that the empoison- 
ment, which happens before the division of the nerve, does 
not take place afterwards, but is owing to the effect produced 
on its motility — to paralysis of it. He seeks for the poison 
nowhere but in the stomach, into which he has introduced 
it, and then he infers that there has been no absorption, 
though he has not had recourse to any chemical analysis in 
order to appreciate the quantities and qualities of the liquids 
contained in the stomach after the experiment. 
M. H. Bouley, in reply to this, said, that those who were 
in favour of the absorbent power of the stomach, explained 
the abolition of this, on section of the pneumogastric nerves, 
through the entire loss of nervous influence ; though I have 
asserted that it is not because the absorbent power is de- 
stroyed, that no empoisonment takes place, but because the 
stomach does not absorb in its normal condition ; and that 
the section of its nerves, by paralysing it, proves it to retain 
within it the poisonous liquid that has been introduced there. 
This is our opinion, based upon experimentation many times 
repeated. — Etc, de Med . Vet., Nov . 1853. 
