EXPERIMENTS ON DIGESTION. 199 
We think that such were the mental cogitations of our friend, 
and every practitioner will participate in such feeling. 
We will Avrite no more than to express our most cordial appro¬ 
bation of the course which our friends are pursuing, and our con¬ 
viction that the great majority of our profession -will sign the Me¬ 
morial. The name of Mayer will be added to the list of those Avho 
have done our profession service, and our children’s children wdll 
have to thank them. 
EXPERIMENTS ON DIGESTION. 
By Professors TiEDEMANN and Gmelin, of the University of 
Heidelbourg. 
We eagerly turn to the simple but profound disquisitions of 
these eminent physiologists. 
THE BILE, AND LIGATURE OF THE DUCTUS CHOLEDOCHUS. 
The action of the bile on the aliments that have been dissolved 
in the stomach, and passed into the intestinal canal, is one of the 
most obscure points in the history of digestion. The theories 
which physiologists have endeavoured to establish on this subject 
are purely hypothetical; and the greater part of them fail entirely 
in all proof furnished by experiment and observation. We range 
in this number. 
1. The opinion of Boerhaave, who maintained that the bile, in 
virtue of its alkaline nature, moderated, or neutralized the acidity 
of the gastric juice. 
2. That of Haller, who believed that the bile exercised a solvent 
action on the aliment, and formed a kind of emulsion with the fatty 
particles which it contained. 
3. That of Englefield Smith, who laboured hard to prove that 
the bile penetrated into the stomach, and contributed to the digest¬ 
ion of the food. 
4. That of Autenreith, Werner, and almost all the modern phy¬ 
siologists, who maintain that the bile effects the precipitation of the 
chyle, by combining with the acid of the gastric juice. 
5. That of Prout, who considers the bile as concurring by its 
mixture with the chyme—^the union of the alkali of the bile with 
the acid of the stomach—to cause the development of those albumi¬ 
nous principles which constitute the chyle. 
Brodie has lately made several ingenious experiments with a 
