Prep. (M. Soyer.) Break 2 to 4 eggs into a basin, add 4 small table-spoonfuls of flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar, and a little salt; beat the whole well together, adding, by degrees, 1⁄2 pint of milk, or a little more or less, depending on the size of the eggs and the quality of the flour, so as to form a rather thick batter; next add a little ginger, cinnamon, or any other flavour at will; lastly, put them into the pan, and when set, and one side brownish, lay hold of the frying-pan at the extremity of the handle, give it a sudden but slight jerk upwards, and the cake will turn over on the other side; when this is brown, dish up with sifted sugar, and serve with lemon. See Fritters.
PANCREAS. This gland, popularly known as the sweet-bread, secretes a colourless and slightly viscid fluid, which possesses the properties of—1. Converting starch into sugar; 2. Of emulsifying fats and oils. And since it is necessary that the starchy and the fatty ingredients of the food should undergo this preparatory change before they are in a condition to become assimilated by the animal economy, it will be seen that pancreatin (as the secretion from the pancreas is called) performs an important function in bodily nutrition.
With a knowledge of these facts before them, it is not surprising that the employment of pancreatin in disease should have been recommended by therapeutists. Dr Harley, we believe, first brought this remedy to the notice of medical men in 1858, since which time its principal advocate has been Dr Horace Dobell, whose method of preparing an emulsion from it, as well as for procuring the pancreatin pure and simple, are given below.
Bernard, correctly divining that the pancreatic fluid was concerned in the process of digestion, conceived that it aided the assimilation of the fatty and oily portions of the food, by saponifying them. Subsequent physiologists have, however, shown, “that the action of the pancreatic secretion is evidently to break up the large granules, crystals, and globules of oil and fat into myriads of minute particles of from 1⁄3000th to 1⁄15000th of an inch in diameter. In this way the fat is emulsified and converted into a milky liquid, which mixes freely with water, and passes through the tissues of the intestines into the lacteals.”[89]
[89] Letheby.
Pancreatin has an alkaline reaction, and putrefies very quickly. It seems to contain a nitrogenous organic principle, resembling ptyalin or diastase in properties. It is coagulated both by heat and nitric acid, and is one of the few secretions in which albumen is present in a soluble condition.
Even when rendered acid, pancreatin does not lose its power of emulsifying fatty bodies. At the moment of food being introduced into the stomach the pancreas gives out this secretion,
which is not very abundant at first, but gradually continues to increase for about four hours, when it as gradually diminishes for three hours more, and then ceases altogether.
Bidder and Schmidt give the following as the composition of the pancreatic fluid or pancreatin:—
| Water | 900·76 | |
| Organic matter (pancreatin) | 90·38 | |
| Chloride of sodium | 7·36 | |
| Free soda | 0·32 | |
| Phosphate of soda | 0·45 | |
| Sulphate of soda | 0·10 | |
| Sulphate of potassa | 0·02 | |
| Combinations | Lime | 0·54 |
| Magnesia | 0·05 | |
| Oxide of iron | 0·02 | |
| ———— | ||
| 1000·00 | ||