Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge.

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    or wounds, external openings have been formed, and pieces of meat being put directly into it, digestion takes place of such matters within a given time, but not so perfectly as when it lias had the benefit of the salivary process. The mass of food when digested is called Chymk, which is a thick creamy substance having more an acid than an al- kaline quality. In this mass there are many oily and fatty substances which the stomach acids cannot convert, but which are more or less changed by the alkali of the saliva.. As fast as the chyme is formed the stomach allows it to escape into the secondary receiver, which is as much an alkaline, as the stomach is an acid, department. Now sec the wisdom of this. All the heavy work being done in the digestive stomach by acid agents, the sccondaiy or chemical stomach simply receives and retains the mass for certain alkaline substances to act thereon. First a largo amount of saliva comes from the sweetbread, and bile in larger quantity from the liver; tlieso unite their alkaline masses in one tube before entering the department, and, thus diluted, mix with the chyme or stomach mass. Whatever sui'plus or stomacli acid, therefore, may be therein contained, is quickly neutralized, whilst all fatty and oily matters are converted into a soapy consistence. All this, however, is so lightly amalgamated, that if it was removed from tlie system in this state, and acid added to it, it would resolve itself into the same condition in which it came down from the firct stomach, and if treated again with an alkali, it would retimn to that state in which the bile and sivliva had reduced it. This mass, then, no longer retains its first stomach cha- racter, but takes the now name of Chyle, which may be justly called a vital compound, to furnish the blood with new chemical elements. The chyle now escapes into the small intestines or the appropriating organs, where it is again mixed with the exhalations and secretions of the mucous mcmbi’anes of this long passage ; many pounds of this fluid being calculated to be secreted therein in every twenty-four hours. The nourishing particles arc carried by the absorbent vessels into a proper duct, undergoing certain elaborating processes on their way ; but where we must leave them for the present. The more solid constituents pass onwai'ds, hecoming more and more consistent until, as an eflete mass