Food 303 



But the action of llic gastric juice is not confined to the circum- 

 stance of reducing the food into minute particles, for it has the power 

 of changing both its taste and smell, and in fact, of destroying all its 

 sensible properties. This, indeed, may be reasonably inferred from 

 a circumstance previously noticed, namely, that putrid flesh is ren- 

 dered sweet in the stomach, by the process of digestion. So that this 

 fact utterly excludes the possibility of supposing, that the gastric juice 

 operates as a putrid ferment, in promoting the digestion of food. 

 Now, as to the chemical qualities of the substances, (unconnected 

 with food) found in the stomach, and examined after the death of the 

 animal, two facts only have been perfectly ascertained, one of which, 

 as Vanquelin and Macquart have proved, is, that the juice in this 

 organ, in sheep and oxen, contains, uniformly, uncombined phosphoric 

 acid ; the other,that it has the property of coagulating milk and the 

 serum of the blood. 



And not only so, but it has been proved that the inner coat of the 

 stomach itself, possesses this property in an astonishing degree. For, 

 Dr. Young proved, nearly fifty years ago, by infusing seven grains of 

 the inner coat of the stomach of a calf in water, that the liquid was 

 capable of coagulating more than an hundred ounces of milk, that is 

 to say, he discovered it had communicated to the infusion, the 

 property of altering the arrangement of the particles and chemical 

 qualities of a fluid more than 6857 times its own weight, which, it 

 is most likely, was but in a small degree diminished. 



The stomach of living animals, however, operates no other 

 change upon food, in the way of digestion, than that of converting it 

 into chyme, which may be considered the first stage of the digestive 

 process. 



