New methods of treatment / Translated and edited from the 2d rev. and enl. French ed. by H. W. Syers.

Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New methods of treatment / Translated and edited from the 2d rev. and enl. French ed. by H. W. Syers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    of performance, or else is only effected at the expense of materials already elaborated, in which case wasting must obviously occur, as also organic decay and consequent diminution of physical resistance. It is this, apart from the fact of their accessibility to observation, which explains the great importance always attached to the healthy performance of these preparatory functions by physiologists and physicians. These preparatory functions may be classified as follows:— 1. Digestion, which converts by resolution and hydro- lysis colloid alimentary materials into dialysable sub- stances. These changes are effected under the influence of soluble ferments which are secreted by the glands of the alimentary canal; they are thus subordinated to the healthy functional activity of these glands. 2. Absorption, by which the assimilable matters thus produced pass through the intestinal wall, not merely as the result of physical forces, but also in consequence of the vital activity of the mucous membrane and, at all events so far as concerns fatty emulsions, of the activity of leucocytes and phagocytes. Hence this function must depend upon the integrity of the digestive mucous membrane. 3. Unless the dialysable substances to be absorbed undergo a partial (or incomplete) dehydration, they would be liable once again to diffusion in the intestinal cavity according to their degree of concentration in the internal medium. This dehydration takes place under the influence of certain little understood ferments, or of vital activity itself; in the first instance in the structures included in the mucous membrane, and finally in the lymphatic glands and the liver. This process results in the formation of the chyle, lymph and blood plasma; and