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PUTREFACTION IN THE INTESTINE. 515
putrefaction of the proteins is not the same as the pancreatic digestion.
In putrefaction the decomposition goes much further, and a mixture of
products is obtained which have become known through the labors
of numerous investigators, especially Nbncki, Baimanx, Bkieger, H.
and E. Salkowski, and their pupils. The products which are formed
in the putrefaetion of proteins are (in addition to proteoses, peptones,
amino-acids, and ammonia) indol, skatol, paracresol, phenol, phenylpro-
pioitic acid, and phenylacetic acid, also paraoxyphenylacetic acid and
hydroparacoumaric acid (besides paracresol, produced in the putrefaction
of tyrosin), volatile fatty acids, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, marsh-gas,
mcthylmercaptan, and sulphureted hydrogen. In the putrefaction of
gelatin neither tyrosine nor indol is formed, while glycocoll is produced
instead.
Among these products of decomposition a few are of special interest
because of their behavior within the organism and because after their
absorption they pass into the urine. A few, such as the oxyacids, pass
unchanged into the urine. Others, such as phenols, are directly trans-
formed into ethereal sulphuric acids by synthesis, and are eliminated as
such by the urine; on the contrary, others, such as indol and skatol, are
converted into ethereal sulphuric acids after oxidation only (for details
see Chapter XIV). The quantity of these bodies in the urine also varies
with the extent of the putrefactive processes in the intestine; at least
this is true for the ethereal sulphuric acids. Their quantity increases
in the urine with a stronger putrefaction, and the reverse takes place,
namely, a disappearance from the urine, or a great reduction in quantity,
as Baumann, Harley and Goodbody 1
have shown by experiments
on dogs, when the intestine is disinfected by various agents.
The gases which are produced by the decomposition processes are
mixed in the intestinal tract with the atmospheric air swallowed with
the saliva and food, and as the gas developed in the decomposition of
different foods varies, so the mixture of gases after various foods should
have a dissimilar composition. This is found to be true. Oxygen is
found only in very faint traces in the intestine; this may be accounted
for in part by the formation of reducing substances in the fermenta-
tion processes which combine with the oxygen, and partly, perhaps
chiefly, to a diffusion of the oxygen through the tissues of the walls of
the intestine. To show that these processes take place mainly in the
stomach, the reader is referred to page 486, on the composition of the
gases of the stomach. Xitrogen is invariably found in the intestine,
and it is probably clue chiefly to the swallowed air. The carbon dioxide
1
Baumann, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 10; Harley and Goodbody, Brit. Med.
Journ., 1899.
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