14 PHYSIOLOGY AND ANATOMY. 
a fluid resembling that in the mouth, called the gastric juice, 
which mixes with the outside portion of the food, making it 
into a soft substance called chyme. All the water that we 
drink is taken up by the veins of the stomach, and is absorb- _ 
ed in about three minutes. It is for this reason that when a 
person has fasted, or has not taken food for some length of — 
time, he derives nourishment quicker from drinking than 
from eating, because the water is soon sent all over the body. 
If the nerves that lead from the stomach to the brain were 
- cut off, the sensations of hunger and thirst which we alt feel 
would be destroyed. After the chyme | has bee 
passes out of the stomach through. the pylo 
demun, or second stomach as it is sometimes ‘called, which is 
the upper_part of the intestines. As soon as one portion: “of 
the food is sent out of the stomach, another portion is form-. 
ed into chyme, and so on till all has been mixed with the 
gastric juice, which soon takes place, unless we have eaten — 
too much food, or that of an improper kind. The chyme, — 
which is prevented from returning to the stomach by a little 
valve in the pylorus, is now mixed with the bile that is 
secreted by the liver; which lies at the right side of the 
stomach, and a juice called the ao juice, which flows 
is 
Tt now travels along over the ee internal surface of the 
intestines, which are six times the - length of the body, but 
are folded in so compact a manner that they occupy but a — 
small space. As the chyle is passing, that part of it which 
will make good blood, or is fit for the growth and nourish- 
ment of the body, is taken up by thousands of little tubes, 
called lacteals (because the fluid is white,) also called capil- 
lary vessels (because the latin word capilla mearis a hair)— 
