A treatise on diet : with a view to establish, on practical grounds, a system of rules for the prevention and cure of the diseases incident to a disordered state of the digestive functions / by J.A. Paris.

  • John Ayrton Paris
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on diet : with a view to establish, on practical grounds, a system of rules for the prevention and cure of the diseases incident to a disordered state of the digestive functions / by J.A. Paris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/420 (page 12)
    ]2 priate diet_, can be properly understood^ or pro- fitably applied^ the reader must be made acquainted with the complicated machinery by which Nature extracts blood from food. The various processes engaged in this wonderful transmutation are ex- pressed by the comprehensive term digestion, although this word is sometimes employed, in a more limited sense, to denote only those prepara- tory changes which the food undergoes in the stomach. Mr. Abernethy would appear to use the term according to this latter acceptation, for he says,—Digestion takes place in the stomach, c/zy- lification in the small intestines, and a third pro- cess, hitherto undenominated, is performed in the large intestines.” The relation of a tale which has been so often told may, perhaps, appear to many as not only superfluous, but reprehensible ; I must, however, remark, that every author is convention- ally allowed to state the theme of his discussion in his own language, and the advantages which have hitherto attended the indulgence sufficiently sanc- tion its continuance.