On animal alkaloids : the ptomaines, leucomaines, and extractives in their pathological relations ... / by Sir William Aitken.

  • William Aitken
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On animal alkaloids : the ptomaines, leucomaines, and extractives in their pathological relations ... / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    61/150 (page 43)
    be the effects of the absorption of the various digestive juices themselves and the ferments they contain, of the bile, of the gastric juice and pepsine, of the pancreatic juice and jDancreatine, and of the succus entericus. That absorption of these juices takes ]3lace there can be little doubt. It has been demonstrated with regard to the bile that it is absorbed with great rapidity from the intestine, and re-excreted by the hver, so that it may not pass into the general circulation at all. Pepsine qn the other hand finds its way in minute quantities through the liver, and has been discovered in various tissues of the body and in the urine. So also with the pancreatic fluid; but with regard to mere absorbed digestive fluids, Dr. Lauder Brunton has pointed out that it seems not unlikely that the liver has got another function (besides those usually assigned to it) namely, that of preventing the digestive ferments from reaching the general circulation so as to act upon the tissues. If therefore this function should ever be in abeyance, then we may expect to have deleterious re- sults. There is no doubt also that the products of intestinal digestion undergo very remarkable changes in the hver, as shown by the formation fi-om them of very large quantities of glycogen, a substance which does not exist in the products of the gastric and in- testinal digestion which reach the liver. Under ordi- nary circumstances in health, nearly the whole of the sugar formed in the intestine and absorbed from it, is arrested in the hver, so that very Uttle ought to pass into the general curculation to be excreted by the kidneys. But albummous substances, the products of intestinal digestion, and peptones also, occasionally make their