Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/29

 doing so entirely and completely; and the views which Lieberkiihn had put forward (p. 10, loc. cit.) as to the great number of the Peyerian glands in the lower segment of the small intestines, being a proof that they held relation to secretion or excretion rather than to absorption, prevailed and have prevailed, even into our own day. These are Lieberkiihn' s words: 'Quare ad finem ilei plures quam in integro intestino positi erunt? Nonne propter faeces jam-judum exsuccas et indurescentes ut lubricatae valvulam facile transeant nee laedant?' In Henle's ordinarily and marvellously excellent Generelle Anatomie, of date 1841, I find (p. 895) the excretory character of the Peyerian follicles taken as something certain; the only thing left uncertain being the question as to whether their contents found their way into the cavity of the intestine by a constantly patent, however small, duct, or by dehiscence, as ova from an ovary. In 1850 the real meaning, the true physiological import, of these glands was proved by Briicke. The method of injection, of which I have spoken, enables us