Volume 2

Letters to brother John, on life, health, and disease / [Edward Johnson].

  • Johnson, Edward, 1785-1862
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters to brother John, on life, health, and disease / [Edward Johnson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    236/342 (page 210)
    food, in order that it may nourish our bodies, 1s very imperfectly effected—the chyme is of unsound ] quality. The next result is this:—the chyme, by admixture with certain other juices which it meets with in the bowels, is destined to become chyle. But the chyme, being of vicious quality, the chyle which is formed from it must be also vicious; at all events, it must be deficient in quantity. Cer- tainly, it is impossible to suppose that as much perfect chyle can be elaborated out of bad chyme as out of good: you might as well hope to make as much good butter out of bad cream, or out of cream and water, as out of pure cream. ‘The chyle, therefore, is deficient in quantity: but it is this chyle which is destined to become blood. The chyle, therefore, being deficient, the blood resulting from it must also be deficient. But the blood 18, in fact, as I have shewn you before, the real food on which the body feeds, by which it is nourished and its strength supported; and this food being scantily supplied, the strength, of course, is but. ill supported. I have said that the chyme is converted imto chyle by admixture with certain juices which it meets with in the bowels. But the same causes which we have seen producing a deficiency of gastric juice