PASSAGE OF FOOD TO THE STOMACH. 143 



tirely from the lower belly — from the intestinal tube. A physio- 

 logy that confesses to living so grossly, can have little enjoyment 

 of refined truths — small sympathy with the good things of the 

 world. It is the very servility of the senses, to make the man dine 

 in his own kitchen ; to bring the repast laboriously down from the 

 drawing-room of the mouth and the saloon of the stomach, to the 

 place of sanded floors and wooden trenchers. It is, indeed, a mat- 

 ter of taste. For the reasons stated, we cling to the upper story, 

 and the other opinion. 



As soon as the exhaustive feast of the tongue is ended, the food 

 is prepared for its next destination, and an act of swallowing takes 

 place ; the tongue rolls the morsel back into the pharynx, a cham- 

 ber intermediate between the mouth and the gullet; the pharynx, 

 successively contracting, moves it down into the latter; and this, 

 taking up the contraction, forwards the ball from point to point, 

 until it reaches the upper or cardiac orifice of the stomach. The 

 viscid saliva of the back of the mouth, and, moreover, all the fluids 

 supplied, or drank, either sheathe the food, or lubricate the passage, 

 and make the transmission easy, and almost spontaneous. Arrived 

 at the entrance to the stomach, which is shut by a circular muscle, 

 the food opens the latter, and passes into the great cavity of the 

 organ. The passage from the mouth to the stomach is accom- 

 plished with rapidity, yet perchance there is a graduated absorption 

 which takes place more swiftly still, and leaves not even an apparent 

 break in the absorbent function following the absorbent structure. 



At the back of the mouth, under ordinary circumstances, the 

 food becomes lost to our consciousness; but as in the tongue we 

 have found manifest taste with invisible feeding or absorption, so 

 here the matter is reversed, and we have henceforth to contemplate 

 manifest absorption with a latent sense of taste. Generalizing the 

 functions of the elongated parts we are enumerating, we may con- 

 sider that the function of taste or quality reigns throughout it, 

 equally with the function of eating or quantity; that to the aliment- 

 ary organs, from beginning to end, there can be no substance with- 

 out taste; and, on the other hand, no taste without substance. 



In the stomach, judging by what there is done, what a scene we 

 are about to enter ! What a palatial kitchen, and more than mo- 



