Disease / Matt Ridley.

  • Matt Ridley
Date:
1997
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Disease / Matt Ridley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    degree. It requires but little knowledge of the workings of nature to understand, that the mere comminution of food will not suffice to make it assimilable and fit for the production of healthy blood, which, after all, is the primary object of the partaking of food. For this purpose it is necessary, that the food be subjected to a chemical change, to transform it, in more or less greater part, into a substance, which, after absorption into the circulation, can easily be assimilated by the blood, by which process this wonderfial fluid regenerates and replenishes itself It will stand to reason that this process of digestion can be better performed, the freer and more intimately the food can intermix with the juices secreted by the various organs, which form the alimentary canal; and, furthermore, the less the action of these organs is interfered with, either by additions to the food of substances, intended to gratify an unnatural taste, but acting as a check upon the free action of the gastric juices; or by too great a quantity of food being taken at one time; and above all by a distension of the stomach through too large a quantity of liquid food imbibed (not so quickly absorbed by the mucous membrane of the stomach as desirable) whether in the form of soup or of drink. Although the food may not contain poisonous organic substances (or germs), and no immediate danger to the organic structure of the system may result from such a mode of maltreating the digestive organ by a surcharge of food—
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