ACTION" OF THE GA8TKIC JUICE UPON MEATS. 257 



presenting its characteristic strise, on microscopic examina- 

 tion. 



Although it is stated by many, in a general way, that the 

 nitrogenized alimentary principles are digested by the gas- 

 tric juice, a review of actual experiments will show that the 

 digestion of meat in the stomach is substantially such as we 

 have just indicated. Beaumont, in his experiments on arti- 

 ficial digestion, while he frequently states that the meat is 

 completely digested, describes the mixture, after a digestion 

 of eight or nine hours, as about the color of whey, and de- 

 positing a fine sediment of a reddish color after standing for 

 a few minutes. 1 In no case does he distinctly state that meat 

 is ever completely dissolved. Pappenheim is quoted by Lon- 

 get as having examined animal matters, ^especially muscular 

 tissue, in various stages of digestion by the gastric juice, and 

 noted the disintegration of the tissue and division of the mus- 

 cular fibres into fragments, but not the solution of the true 

 muscular substance. 2 Burdach, in his elaborate treatise on 

 physiology, describes the digestion of meat as consisting in the 

 solution of its cellular tissue, which is dissolved, first separa- 

 ting the muscular fibres, and finally being converted into a 

 pultaceous mass, more or less brown. 3 The same facts, essen- 

 tially, have been noted by Bernard in experiments with the 

 gastric juice of different animals. This observer has found 

 that the fluid from the stomach of the rabbit or the horse is 

 much inferior, as regards the activity of its action upon meat, 

 to the gastric juice of the dog. 4 He compares the disinte- 

 grating process which takes place in the stomach to the ac- 

 tion of boiling water in cooking. Dr. Dalton has found, in 

 the dog, that during digestion, partially disintegrated mus- 

 cular fibres, 'still recognizable on microscopic examination, 



1 BEAUMONT, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Phys- 

 iology of Digestion, Plattsburg, 1833, p. 129. 



2 LONGET, op. cit., tome i., p. 222. 



3 BURDACH, Traite de Physiologic, Paris, 1841, tome ix., p. 273. 



4 BERNARD, Lemons de Physiologic Experimentale, Paris, 1851, p. 414. 



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