Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Physiological chemistry (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![to say, of the chyle-corpuscles, which are very rich in fat, and partly to its transition into a state of saponification, as we may judge from the quantity of the alkaline salts of the fatty acids present in the chyle of the thoracic duct. No direct observations have as yet been made concerning the patho- logical relations of the chyle. We cannot regard the question of the quantity of chyle which enters the blood in a given time, as satisfactorily settled. Cruikshank1 assumes the quantity of chyle which is hourly mixed with the blood to be 4 pounds. His calculation rests upon an observation of the rapidity of the motion of the chyle in the mesentery of a dog, which he found to be four inches in a second, and hence he assumed a similar rate of velocity in the thoracic duct. But independently of the untenability of the latter position, the rapidity of the motion of the chyle in the lymphatics of the mesentery depends upon many different relations, which, from their variable character, can scarcely be adequately appreciated in ob- servations made during vivisection. Magendie, who endeavored to de- termine the quantity of the chyle by opening the cervical portion of the thoracic duct of well-fed dogs, and observing the quantity which flowed in a given time, found that half an ounce escaped in five minutes, which was at the rate of six ounces in the hour. Bidder, who has made simi- lar experiments on dogs that had been previously strangled, arrived at nearly similar results ; but unfortunately, as this observer remarks, such experiments scarcely warrant us in drawing any definite conclusion. If, for instance, as Vierordt2 observes, the ascent of the chyle be arrested by cutting the thoracic duct, which is one of the most efficient causes of its motion, it must not be forgotten, that this operation may be followed by too abundant a discharge ; for here, as in the analogous but more strongly-marked case of the blood, there will necessarily be an afflux of juices from all sides, which must increase in an extraordinary degree the vis a tergo, however small it may be, by which the chyle is propelled. The lymph will at all events flow more abundantly, rendering the result of the inquiry so uncertain as to prevent any proper solution of the physiological question concerning the quantity of the newly-formed and elaborated nutrient matter which passes through the chyle-vessels. Vierordt proposes the following method for computing the quantity of the chyle which passes into the blood of an adult in 24 hours :—As 100 grammes of dry nitrogenous matters are daily consumed by an adult man, and as the chyle contains about 4[J of such matters, the quantity of chyle daily formed will amount to 1\ kilogrammes, or about 5 pounds.3 Vierordt himself observes that this calculation does not admit of a com- parison with those of the earlier inquirers, because the lymph mixed i [Lehmann refers in a foot-note to p. 78 of Ludwig's translation of Cruikshank's •'Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels as his authority for this assertion. All that Cruikshank says is: The chyle in the lacteals of the mesentery of dogs, in some of my experiments, evidently run through a space of four inches in a second, which is twenty feet in a minute. 1st Ed., Lond., 1786, p. 29. In neither his first nor his second edition (published in 1790) does he attempt to determine the quantity of the chyle.—G. e. d.] 2 Arch. f. phys. Heilk. Bd. 7, S. 281-285. 8 [The kilogramme = 2-2 pounds avoirdupois; hence 2\kilogrammes = 5J pounds.— O. E. D.J](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21136300_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
