812 



DIGBY 



DIGESTION 



middle of the 7th century B.C., although, as 

 Bentley has proved, it must have been in use at 

 the time when most of the Homeric poems were 

 composed. It appears as the letter F in the Latin 

 alphabet, which was derived at a very early period 

 from the alphabet of Eubcea. In later Greek, 

 though discarded as a letter, it is retained in the 

 form 5" as the numeral for 6. See the articles on 

 F and V. 



Digby, a small seaport of Nova Scotia, on St 

 Mary^s Bay, reputed for its curing of a variety of 

 small herrings or pilchards ( 'Nova Scotia sprats '). 

 There was a great fire in February 1899. Pop. 1951. 



Digby, SIR KENELM, was born at Gayhurst, 

 near Newport Pagnell, llth July 1603. His 

 father, Sir Everard Digby (1578-1606), in 1592 

 came into a large estate, but seven years later 

 turned Catholic, and was hanged for his part in 

 the Gunpowder Plot ( q^ v. ). Kenelm himself was 

 bred a Catholic, but m 1618, after a half-year 

 in Spain, entered Gloucester Hall, Oxford (now 

 Worcester College). He left it in 1620 without 

 a degree, and spent nearly three years abroad, 

 in Florence chiefly. At Madrid he fell in with 

 Prince Charles, and following him back to Eng- 

 land, was knighted, and entered his service. In 

 1625, after a singular courtship, he secretly married 

 'that celebrated beautie and courtezane,' Venetia 

 Stanley (1600-33), who had been his playmate in 

 childhood. With two privateers he sailed in 1628 

 to the Mediterranean, and on llth June van- 

 quished a French and Venetian squadron off 

 Scanderoon. On his beloved wife's death he with- 

 drew to Gresham College, and there passed two 

 hermit-like years, diverting himself with chemistry 

 and the professors' good conversation. Meanwhile 

 he had professed the Protestant faith, but, ' look- 

 ing back,' in 1636 he announced his reconversion 

 to Archbishop Laud ; and his tortuous conduct 

 during the Great Rebellion was dictated, it seems, 

 by his zeal for Catholicism. He was imprisoned 

 by the Parliament (1642-43), and had his estate 

 confiscated; was at Rome (1645-47), where he 

 finished by ,' hectoring at his Holiness ; ' and thrice 

 revisited England (1649-51-54), the third time 

 staying two years, and entering into close rela- 

 tions with Cromwell. At the Restoration, how- 

 ever, he was well received, and retained his office 

 of chancellor to Queen Henrietta Maria. He was 

 one of the first members of the Royal Society 

 (1663), and died llth June 1665. 



'The very Pliny of our age for lying,' said 

 Stubbes of Digby, whom Evelyn terms ' an arrant 

 mountebank.' Yet he was a friend of Descartes 

 and Sir Thomas Browne ( q.v.) ; he could appreciate 

 the discoveries of Harvey, Bacon, and Galileo. In 

 the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xv. 

 1888) Mr S. L. Lee points out, that 'as a philo- 

 sopher an Aristotelian Sir Kenelm undoubtedly 

 owed much to Thomas White ; ' and he questions 

 whether his much- vaunted ' powder of sympathy ' 

 was not really invented by Sir Gilbert Talbot. 

 This powder Digby professed to have learned the 

 secret from a Carmelite who had travelled in the 

 farthest East was made of vitriol, and applied to 

 a bandage, not to the wound itself. Anyhow, 

 Digby's Discourse thereon (1658), like his Treatise 

 of Bodies and of Man's Soul (1644), contains much 

 that is curious, if little of real value ; whilst in 

 his Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants 

 (1660), the chief of his other twelve works, he 'is 

 said to have been the first to notice the importance 

 of vital air or oxygen to plants.' See his bom- 

 bastic Memoirs, dealing with his courtship (ed. 

 Nicolas, 1827); his Scanderoon Voyage (Caruden 

 Society, 1868); and his Life 'by one of his de- 

 scendants' (1896). 



Digby, KENELM HENRY, was born in 1800, 

 youngest son of the dean of Clonfert. Having 

 entered Trinity College, Cambridge, he took his 

 B.A. in 1819, and three years later published the 

 Broad Stone of Honour ' that noble manual for 

 gentlemen,' as Julius Hare called it, 'that volume 

 which, had I a son, I would place in his hands, 

 charging him, though such admonition would be 

 needless, to love it next to his Bible.' It was much 

 altered and enlarged in the 1828 and subsequent 

 editions (the latest 1877), its author having in the 

 meantime turned Catholic. He died in London, 

 where most of his long life was spent, on 22d 

 March 1880. Of fourteen other works (32 vols. 

 1831-74) all the last eight were poetry. 



Digest, a name often given to the Pandects 

 (q.v.) of the civil or Roman law, because they 

 contained ' Legalia prsecepta excellenter digesta.' 



Digester, PAPIN'S, is a strong boiler with a 

 closely fitting cover, in which articles of food may 

 be boiled at a higher temperature than 212 ( 100 

 C. ). As its name implies, it was invented by Papin 

 (q.v.), and a common form is the Autoclave, fig. 1, 

 where the lid can be turned round under clamps or 

 ears, and thus be rendered steam-tight. Another 

 form is given in fig. 2, where a portion of the side 



Papin's Digester. 



is removed to exhibit the interior. The lid, A, is 

 fastened down by a screw, B, and the steam gener- 

 ated in the boiler is allowed to escape at a stop- 

 cock, C, or by raising the weighted valve, D. The 

 increased pressure to which the contents of the 

 boiler are exposed causes the boiling-point of the 

 water to rise to 400 (204 C.), and occasionally 

 higher. The digester is of great value as a means 

 of preparing soups of various kinds, and especially 

 in the extraction of gelatin from bones. 



Digestion is the change which food undergoes 

 in order to prepare it for the nutrition of the animal 

 frame, and is carried on in the higher animals in the 

 DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. In some of the lowest forms 

 of animal life (amoebae) particles of food may be 

 drawn into the body (which possesses no special 

 organs at any part of its surface), and may then 

 be digested. In higher organisms, however, parts 

 have become evolved, which serve more especially 

 the function of digestion. Thus in the common 

 sea anemone there is a simple pouch which leads 

 inwards from the centre of the cluster of ten- 

 tacles. Into this fish and other food are drawn 

 and digested, while the undigested parts are after- 

 wards voided through the same aperture by which 

 they entered. In still higher organisms, man him- 

 self included, this simple pouch is changed into a, 

 complex and greatly elongated tube, which is pro- 

 vided with one aperture (the mouth) by which food 

 enters, and another aperture (the anus) through 

 which undigested matter leaves the body. The 

 whole digestive system is lined with a soft mem- 



