On the structure of the intestinal villi in man and certain of the mammalia, with some observations on digestion, and the absorption of chyle / by John Goodsir.

Date:
[1845]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the structure of the intestinal villi in man and certain of the mammalia, with some observations on digestion, and the absorption of chyle / by John Goodsir. 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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    or as a secreting cell, it must have acted as an absorbing cell.* This absorption, too, must necessarily be of a peculiar and specific nature. It is in virtue of it, that the nutritive cell selects and absorbs from the liquor sanguinis those parts of the latter necessary for building up the peculiar tissue of which the cell is the germ. It is in virtue of this peculiar force that the secreting cell not only selects and absorbs, but also in some instances elaborates, from the same common material, the particular secretion of which it is the immediate organ. And it is by the same force that the cell becomes the im- mediate agent of absorption in certain morbid processes. The primitive cell, then, is primarily an organ of specific absorption, and secondarily of nutrition, growth, and secre- tion. With these few introductory observations on subjects which * “ Absorption,” says Professor Muller, Baly’s Translation, p. 301, “ seems to depend on an attraction, the nature of -which is at present unknown, but of which the very counterpart, as it were, takes place in secretion; the fluids altered by the secreting action being impelled towards the free surface only of the secreting membranes, and then pressed onwards by the successive portions of fluid secreted. In many organs, for instance in those invested with mucous membranes—absorption by the lymphatics and secretion by the secreting organs, are going on at the same time on the same surface.” It appears, however, from what I have stated in the present paper, and in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. 1842, that Prof. Muller, and indeed all the physiolo- gists hitherto have been in error in supposing the forces of secretion and ab- sorption as of different and opposite tendencies,—the one attractive, the other repulsive. They are both attractive, absorption being but the first stage in the process of secretion. Secretion, in fact, differs from absorption, not phy- siologically, but morphologically. What has been stated in the present paper explains also how, in the mu- cous membranes, “ absorption by lymphatics and secretion by secreting or-* gans are going on at the same time on the same surface.” (Muller, loc. cit.) There is no physiological mystery in this. It depends on a morphological circumstance. The absorbing chyle cells are on the attached surface of the primary membrane—the secreting epithelia are on its free surface; the for- mer are interstitial cells, the latter peripheral^ the former cast their con- tents into the substance of the organism,—the latter into the surrounding medium. It may be here observed that absorption, as it occurs in the chyle vessels, takes place as in the absorption which occurs in all the secreting cells, through two structureless membranes, probably molecular in their con- stitution—the primary membrane and the membrane of the cell.