The Absorption of Fats Studied in a Child With Chylothorax

The way in which fat is absorbed in healthy people is still largely unknown. This lack of knowledge chiefly concerns the question whether complete hydrolysis of the dietary fat is necessary before it is absorbed, or whether absorption through the intestinal wall is possible without complete hydrolysis. In the past few decades this problem has been studied mainly by Verzar and McDougall (1, 2) and by Frazer (3-12), al-though in widely different ways. The quintessence of Verzar's theory is: com-plete hydrolysis of fat in the intestine and syn-thesis of the fatty acids to triglycerides in the in-testinal cells, via an intermediate stage of phospho-lipids. The main features of Frazer's theory are: