Am  jJuiy?i?9hoarm'}         Theory  of  Absorption  of  Fat.  363 
coffee,  etc.,  they  are  not  poisoned  by  their  consumption.  It  is  a 
question  how  much  a  purchaser  is  himself  to  blame,  in  his  endeavor 
to  secure  a  "  bargain,"  when  he  demands  so  great  a  quantity  of  any 
given  material  at  less  than  it  can  be  purchased  at  wholesale  in  the 
market,  that  he  compels  the  unscrupulous  manufacturer  to  make  a 
compound  which  has  never  more  and  generally  less  than  the  pro- 
portion of  the  genuine  material  represented  by  the  price  asked. 
Many  articles  of  food  spoil  in  transportation  ;  and>  under  the  plea 
of  preventing  further  fermentation,  resort  is  had  to  antiseptics,  such 
as  salicylic  acid,  sulphite  of  soda,  borax,  etc.  These  deserve  men- 
tion as  being  additions  to  foods  of  a  class  of  substances  used  to 
cloak  carelessness  in  manufacture  and  otherwise,  and  producing  in 
many  cases  deleterious  effects  on  the  human  economy.  In  France 
and  Germany  the  use  of  such  antiseptics  as  salicylic  acid  in  food 
products  is  prohibited,  although  in  the  latter  country  such  addition 
is  tolerated  when  the  food  product  is  exported  to  countries  where 
such  use  is  not  prohibited. 
ON  THE  THEORY  OF  ABSORPTION  OF  FAT.1 
By  Dr.  Minkowski. 
The  absorption  of  water  even  is  subject  to  other  laws  than  those 
of  pure  filtration  and  diffusion — "vital  forces,"  meaning  by  the 
expression  a  sum  of  chemical  and  physical  occurrences  not  yet 
thoroughly  made  out,  come  into  play  and  complicate  what  was  once 
considered  a  simple  problem.  With  fat  there  are  more  complica- 
tions, and,  consequently,  a  host  of  theories.  Amongst  these,  two 
stand  out  prominently.  The  one  holds  that  the  fat  is  first  converted 
into  a  fine  emulsion,  of  which  the  individual  droplets  are  carried 
into  the  lacteals  either  by  the  activity  of  the  cylindrical  epithelium 
of  the  mucous  membrane,  or  according  to  another  view,  by  the 
agility  of  the  leucocytes,  who  sally  out  between  the  cells,  capture 
the  globules  of  fat,  and  retire  with  them  by  the  way  they  came  into 
the  lacteals.  The  second  theory  is  that  the  neutral  fat  is  split  up  in 
the  bowel  into  glycerin  and  fatty  acids.  The  fatty  acids  are  then 
saponified  by  the  alkalies,  in  the  secretion  of  the  intestine,  and 
absorbed  in  the  form  of  soluble  easily  diffusible  soap.  Once 
2  Berliner  klin.  JVoch.,  No.  15,  1890.  Reprinted  from  The  Med.  Chronicle, 
June,  1890. 
