from 20 to 30l. It deserves to be added, that this fruit may be kept in a fresh state for many years, merely by immersing it in a bottle filled with springwater, and closely stopped. Silver, boiled in a decoction of the berries, acquires a whiter and more beautiful lustre.
All the species of the bilberry are antiseptic; and their juices, mixed with sugar, and properly fermented, may be converted into grateful and wholesome domestic wines.
BILE, is a yellow, or greenish, saponaceous liquor, secreted in the liver, and collected in the gall-bladder, into which it regurgitates, as it were, into a blind gut, and is thence discharged into the lower end of the duodenum, or beginning of the jejunum. (See Abdomen). Its principal use appears to be that of sheathing or blunting the acids contained in our daily food, and thus enabling the milky liquor, called chyle, after being mixed with bile in the duodenum, to enter the lacteal veins, or milk vessels, which convey a nutritious supply to the whole body. (See Lacteals). Hence an increased quantity of aliment requires a greater proportion of bile, to promote its digestion; and, accordingly as the stomach is more or less distended with food, it presses on the gall-bladder to obtain a proportionate quantity of bile, which is then mixed with the chyle, as before described.—See Chyle, and Liver.
Bile is a very important fluid in the animal economy, insomuch, that from an excessive secretion of it, the inhabitants of warm climates become liable to many tedious and often fatal diseases. A superabundance of bile in the first passages, either flows again into the stomach, and is productive of general languor, nausea, a foul tongue, loss of appetite, and indigestion; or, when it is determined to the intestines, it is generally attended with a painful diarrhœa. In the temperate climates, however, a vitiated and superfluous bile is more frequently diffused through the whole body. In this case, the skin assumes a yellow colour, the urine becomes sensibly impregnated with bilious matter, the pulse is preternaturally quick, and the patient complains of heat, thirst, head-ach, and other symptoms of fever. His body becomes gradually emaciated, and his visage strongly indicates the disorder of the constitution.—Various are the causes of this extensive derangement of the different bodily functions; but we may safely assert, that most persons, particularly in hot climates, contract bilious diarrhœas, colics, fevers, and chronic diseases of the liver, by intemperance, in eating animal food, drinking spirituous liquors, and by braving ihe sudden transitions of temperature, from the intense heat of day to the piercing chilness of night, and thus checking insensible perspiration—one of the most necessary excretions of the human body. For the cure of such maladies as may arise from numerous and diversified causes, no general plan can be safely prescribed. But it deserves to be remarked, that the greatest benefit may be derived from adopting a proper diet and regimen; both with a view to prevent and relieve bilious diseases. Hence we would advise persons liable to eructations, flatulency, and costiveness, which arise from a vitiated bile, to abstain from all acrid, watery, and
oily
