Note 177 — PHARMACOLOGIA. ON THE OPERATIONS OF MEDICINAL BODIES, AND ON THE CLASSIFICATIONS FOUNDED ON THEM. (continued 2)

It sometimes happens that the stomach and digestive organs are so weakened by disease as to lose their control, or what Dr. Fordyce called their ‘governing power,’ in which case they would appear to be unable to prevent the matters which they contain from acting chemically upon each other, and occasioning decompositions and new combinations: in such cases substances are sometimes developed in the internal organs by the action of disease, which are capable of producing a chemical effect upon the fluids; for instance,—an acid is not unfrequently generated in the bowels of children which decomposes the bile and produces a green precipitate, and green stools are the consequence; in other cases the acid combines with the Soda of the bile, and the precipitate thus occasioned is thick, viscid, very bitter, and inflammable, and we have stools looking like pitch. In Yellow Fever, and in several other diseases, the bile which is brought up by vomiting is frequently of a vivid green colour, and some writers have attributed the phenomenon to a morbid condition, or action of the liver or gall bladder; the fact however is, that the bile itself undergoes a chemical change in the Duodenum and Stomach. That bile does undergo such a change from decomposition, is proved by a variety of facts observed to take place out of the body; it is well known, for instance, that the fæces of infants, although yellow when voided, frequently become green after some time, and Dr. Heberden observes, in his Commentaries, that the urine of a certain jaundiced patient, which was of a deep yellow, became after a few hours green: in such cases it is probable that an acid is generated by the reaction of the elements of which the bile consists.