The medical assistant, or Jamaica practice of physic, designed chiefly for the use of families and plantations / [Thomas Dancer].

  • Thomas Dancer
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical assistant, or Jamaica practice of physic, designed chiefly for the use of families and plantations / [Thomas Dancer]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * The stomach: is not, as some are apt to imagine, a loose floating mem- Secr.. V. “branous bag, but a muscular organ, which Sdaces itself to its contents, “vo so as never to be, strictly speaking, empty, but always more or less dis- . tended. Irom the internal surface is secreted a liquor called the gastric ice, which is of great importance in digestion, being a chemical sol- yent for our food.* The food, divided, rasticated, and mixed with saliva in our mouths, descends, in the act of deglutition, by the cso- phagus into the stomach at the cardia or superior orifice. Ilere mixing with the former contents of the stomach, and subject to the action of the gastric liquor, it undergoes what is called digestion—i. e. it is changed into a pulpy mass, which gradually passes over the pylorus, the lower orifice of the stomach, into the duodenum, or first intestine, whére it receives the bile from the liver, and the pancreatic juice, which are requisite for the further changes it has to undergo, before it is taker up by the lacteals, and conveyed to the receptacle of the chyle, aa finally to the left subclavian vein, to be mixed with the circulating blood. The liver, the organ destined for the secretion of the bile, does not receive the blood, in the usual way of other secretory organs, from the arteries, but from a large vein calfed the vena portarum, which is distri- buted through the liver by an infinity of small branches. The bile then is formed from the returning and recrementitious part of the blood, and, after secretion, is deposited in the gall-bladder; where its qualities seem to be further exalted} The great flow ef it in some diseases, and the , a | efiect * Spallanzani first proved, by experiment, that the gastric juice was a true chemical solvent, and that digestion is a process not carried on by the action of the stomach, its heat, &c. as formerly “Delisved.— Dr. Fordyce will not allow of the word menstruum being applied to the gastric juice, but explains the process of digestion as going on, by decomposition pe recombination, in conse- guence of clectrive attraction. Digestion is a living, not a purely chemical, process, as ap pears from ~“ viz. the chyle i is-always Ehamcatie from wh: niger aliments it is formed. Fordyce on Divestion. Bile is, by experiment, proved to be soda, combined with an inflammable resin, Muriatic iit poured on bile, forms muriate of soda, that is to say, commen salt. The preternatural flow of bile, which often occurs, is probably for the purpose of correcting semething generated in the alimentary canal, in the same way as the lachrymal gland is made te pour out tears for washing cf a See substance from the eyes.. (See Dr. Mitchil N. Y. Repos. Saunders on the Liver. )— Rush has lately advanced some novel_and very singular opinions concerning the functions of the ‘ieee spleen, and thyroid g gland. The spleen he supposes to be a reservoir to receive the biood, and relieve the heart in all | Cases of quickened circulation from exercise, the passions, &e, . The thyroid
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