A practical synopsis of the materia alimentaria and materia medica / by Richard Pearson.

  • Richard Pearson
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical synopsis of the materia alimentaria and materia medica / by Richard Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    the best—those in which it is presented in its entire and undissolved state; for though most of the nutritious particles of animal matter are soluble in water, yet ail that is convertible into chyle by the action of the gastric and enteric juices, is not. Within a few hours after a portion of beef has been taken into the stomach of a healthy carnivo- rous animal, it is found reduced to a pultaceous mass, without the smallest vestige of a fibrous struc- ture remaining; but if an equal quantity of the same animal substance be boiled in water for a much greater length of time, only a small portion will be dissolved, and a considerable residuum of fibrous matter will be left beind. It follows, therefore, that a pound of flesh, or muscular fibre swallowed in substance, will yield more nourishment, when acted upon by a healthy stomach, than the concentrated decoction or soup prepared from an equal weight. (Fordyce on Digestion.) It is the same with cer- tain medicinal substances. The gastric juice is ca- pable of dissolving a greater proportion of cinchona in substance than water is; hence a pound of the cinchona-bark swallowed at different times, in subr stance, will cure more agues than the decoctions obtained from an equal quantity of that bark. But as there are disorders in which the cinchona disagrees in substance, and is yet bearable in decoc- tion ; there are likewise instances, and those by no means unfrequent, in which the stomach, unequal to the digestion of animal food in substance, can only extract a sufficient supply of nourishment from it when taken in a liquid state. Hence
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