Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge].

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    branes, as if by the finest sieves. There is abundant reason for concluding that some mechanical power is exercised by the small intestines for this purpose, as their action is not dissimilar to that of hand-washing of linen or the grinding of corn by millstones. Their healthy condition depends upon their inner sides being always in close apposition. This fact, coupled with the movements above described, constitute what is called the vermicular or peristaltic action. So that, beginning from the moment fresh matter or Chyle enters into them, the action continues progressively to the end, for no such similar action takes place in any other intestine. It has been supposed to exist in the large intestines, but this is contrary to the nature of this viscus. Thus, the solid constituents are forced onwards and down¬ wards, becoming more and more consistent until, as an effete mass with its fluid nourishment extracted, it finds its way into the large intestines, which immediately shut it off by a valve from this part of the appropriating canal. Thus, stomach digestion having first done its work, and chemical transformation completed it, the system appro¬ priates the result. The fluids that are taken into the stomach at meals assist to dilute the mass and suspend the animal properties ; wine and spirit if taken albumenize the mucus so largely secreted, the watery portions of which pass off, while the stomach digests the more solid coagu¬ lated masses. Milk for example is curdled by the stomach acids, the whey passes off and the curd too frequently remains a long time undigested and this gives rise to many primary forms of disease, especially in children. We now take our leave of these great natural actions and come to the fourth and last, which is as great and as important as all these three together. The large intestines have alreadv been described as going all round the abdomen from the right to the left side: they receive that portion of the digested food which comes under the denomination of non-nutritious. Their very size, length, and extent show their importance; and their duties are of a far higher character than are popularly assigned to them. To say they are only recipients of faecal matter awaiting the natural desire to be evacuated, is absurd. If that had been all that were required of them, they need not have