CHYLE. The food undergoes various changes in the alimentary canal, which will be fully noticed in the article on DIGESTION. One of these changes is its conversion in the stomach into a pulpy mass termed chyme. The chyme, which passes onward into the small intestine, is acted upon by the bile, pancreatic fluid, and intestinal juice, and through their influences is separated into the chyle, which is absorbed or sucked up by the lacteals (q.v.) and into matters unfit for nutrition, which ultimately find their way out of the system by the intestinal canal. The mode in which this nutritious C. is taken up by vessels distributed over the small intestines, and the changes which it undergoes before it is converted into true blood, are described in the articles LAcTEALs, Tuonectc DUCT, and NUTRITION. We shall here merely notice its leading physical and chemical properties. When obtained from the thoracic duct of an animal that has been killed while the process of digestion was on (especially if it had taken fatty food), the C.
is a white, milky-looking, or yellowish fluid, with a faintly alkaline reaction. Like the blood, it coagulates in about ten minutes after its abstraction from the body of the animal; and in about three hours a small but distinct gelatinous clot is separated from the serous fluid of the chyle.
Ou examining C. under the microscope, we find that it contains enormous numbers of minute molecules (probably consisting of fat), together with nucleated cells, which are termed the chyle-corpuscles, and are apparently identical with the white or colorless blood-cells. The chemical constituents of C. are much the same as those of blood; fibrin, albumen, fat. extractive matters, and .salts being the most important.