Cookery for common ailments / by a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Phyllis Browne [pseud.].

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cookery for common ailments / by a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Phyllis Browne [pseud.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    and intimately intermingled with the proper secre- tion of the mouth, the saliva. The whole process is termed mastication, but a special term, insaliva- tion, is reserved for the intermingling of the sahva with the food. Mastication, however, is the larger term, for it involves insalivation. The teeth as cutting and grinding instruments, the tongue as a stirrer, the salivary glands to furnish the secre- tion—these are the parts concerned. In respect of certain sohd foods the mouth serves only to disintegrate, to break up, and in this way to prepare for the next operation; but in the case of certain others, belonging to the group of the starches and sugars, it performs an additional chemical process. This latter results from the in- fluence of the sahva upon the carbohydrates as a group ; by it these are converted into more soluble or assimilable bodies. The active principle in the sahva is a ferment cahed ptyaline, and it serves the same function that an allied body, diastase, per- forms in the process of malting. The sahva by moistening the food enables it, after comminution, to be swallowed. This is a mechanical service which it will effect for all forms of sohd food; but it
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