in the animal economy, a milky fluid, secreted from the aliment by means of digestion.

The principles of the chyle seem to be sulphurous, mucilaginous, saline, and aqueous. It is a kind of natural emulsion, both with regard to the colour, the ingredients, and the manner of preparation. There is this difference between the artificial and natural emulsion, that the latter is far more pure, and is prepared with much greater apparatus, not by the sudden expression of part of the liquid, but by a gentle and successive percolation. The chyle is made sooner or later, according to the difference of the temperaments, strength, aliments and customs; therefore how many hours chylification requires, cannot be certainly determined. When the chyle enters the villous oscula of the lacteals, it is not a fluid extracted merely from the aliment and drink, but a mixture of fluids; that is, the saliva and thinner mucus of the mouth, and the two fluids of the oesophagus, one proceeding from the villous membrane of the tube itself, the other from its glands. To these may be added the glutinous fluid of the stomach, the pancreatic juice, the fluid of peyer's glands, which are very numerous in the small intestines. Hence the reason appears, why men may live upon bread and water, why the oriental nations use rice in the room of all kinds of pulse, and why acids, spirituous liquors, saline things, and many vegetable juices, herbs, roots, acid and aromatic substances, are the least fit to generate chyle.