Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

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It has been found by experiments, made by Blumenthal and Jacobi, that extirpation of the thyroid is followed by a dilation of the gall-bladder, and many authors have noted the presence of biliary constituents in the urine of animals whose thyroid has been extirpated.

We can readily understand why women with changes in the thyroid and sexual glands are so often attacked by gall-stone disease. In these women there is, as a rule, atony of the intestines, with habitual constipation. This intestinal atony is also accompanied by an atony of the gall-ducts, and so the bile is more or less stagnant in these ducts.

As shown by Morat and Doyon,^[136] the gall-ducts contract rhythmically every ten to twenty seconds, and the bile is thus expressed. The periodical compression of the liver by the diaphragm at each inspiration also helps this expression of the bile. Thus it flows under a certain pressure through the choledochus, and it is easy to understand that the billions of microbes which infest the intestines, will have great difficulty in passing the narrow and tortuous passages of the bile-ducts through which bile is circulating at great pressure. And this is of the utmost importance, for if microbes are able to pass the common duct and thus enter the bile-ducts, they will set up inflammation, as was shown by several French authors: Gombault, Charcot, Gilbert, etc.