Researches into the action of mercury, podophylline, and taraxacum on the biliary secretion : being the report of the Edinburgh Committee of the British Medical Association / by John Hughes Bennett.

  • Bennett, John Hughes, 1812-1875.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches into the action of mercury, podophylline, and taraxacum on the biliary secretion : being the report of the Edinburgh Committee of the British Medical Association / by John Hughes Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    fistulte, in consequence of the increased diet they require, no conclusion can be drawn as to the quantity of bile likely to be secreted in healthy dogs in proportion to the amount of food they take. 4. The quantity of bile secreted in proportion to the weight of the animal is estimated too highly by Bidder and Schmidt, and also by Nasse; because all animals with biliary fistulas require much more than their ordinary food to keep up their usual weight, while the quantity of diet influences the amount of bile secreted. 5. Besides food, the drinking of water considerably increases the secretion of bile. 6. The nature of the food does not much influence the solid constituents of bile. Arnold admits, however, that in this respect Nasse's observations may be more accurate than his own. 7. The secretion of bile, apart from the influence that it exerts on the absorption of fat, plays an important part in the process of nutrition. 8. In Arnold's dog the biliary secretion was most copious during the first hours after taking food. After the fourth hour it began to diminish until the twenty-fourth hour, when it was least, but the diminution was not regular. His manner of collecting it, however, like that of Bidder and Schmidt, is objectionable, viz. at varying periods of fifteen minutes, half an hour, and an hour. Instead, therefore, of determining how much bile flowed in twenty-four hours, this was made to appear by multiplying so many times the half-hour or hour collections. KoLLizEE and MtiLLEE,* made some experiments on the bile during the years 1853 and 1854, of which they published an account in the Wurzburg Ab- handlungen for 1855. They succeeded in establishing biliary fistulso in three dogs. Por one kilogramme of dog, they found in twenty-four hours—■ Hours after food. Fresh bile. Dry residue. No. of observations. Ito 2 1450 0-051 8 3 to 5 1-407 0-047 5 6 to 8 1-514 0-048 8 16 to 22 1-320 0-051 7 Another dog gave the largest quantity four to five hours after feeding, and least after nineteen to twenty-one hours. A third dog gave the maximum five to six hours after a meal, and not much less after sixteen or seventeen hours. They found, as other observers had done, that the quantity of food consumed has a decided influence on the quantity of the biliary secretion. When, for example, a dog ate 18^ ounces of flesh in twenty-four hours, the bile collected amounted from 5-3 to 6-6 grammes in an hour, but when it ate 33| ounces of flesh, it was increased from 7*5 to 7*8 grammes. It is important to observe that the calculations of XoUiker and Miiller, like those of Bidder and Schmidt, were derived from collections of bile made during a quarter of an hour, half an hour, and occasionally one hour, and the amount per day was estimated from the averages of these. In no case was it collected continuously for twenty-four hours. Scott t.—Dr. Scott appears to have been the first who collected all the bile secreted by a dog during twenty-four consecutive hours. We must refer to his paper for a description of the method he adopted for collecting it, and for the account he gives of his interesting and carefully conducted experiments and analyses. He avoided the error liable to occur in calculating the amou^nt of bile secreted in twenty-four hours from quantities obtained during a part only of that period. He estimated the amount of fresh bile given off in twenty- four hours at about 23-15 grammes ; of dried residue at 1*13 per kilogramme. Wiirzburg Abliandhmgen fiir 1855, Band V. t Beale's 'Archives,' vol. i. 1868. P