ORAL DIGESTION. 



567 



swallow food without due mastication, or waste the saliva by constant 

 and profuse spitting, are more liable to attacks of dyspepsia, or imper- 

 fect digestion. It is proper, however, to add, that Dr. Budge, 1 on 

 extirpating the salivary glands in animals, did not find that they sus- 

 tained the smallest apparent injury; whence he conjectures, that certain 

 glands can act as succedanea to others, and that in the removal of the 

 salivary glands the pancreas supplies perhaps the fluid usually secreted 

 by the other. 



A table given by Dr.- Robert Dundas Thomson 2 as the results of ex- 

 periments on two cows, signally exhibits the beneficial effects of a proper 

 grinding of the food. The cows were fed on entire barley and malt 

 steeped in hot water. They were then fed on crushed barley and malt 

 prepared in the same manner. The influence of the finer division of 

 the grain in increasing the quantity of milk is strikingly shown. 



Entire barley and grass, 

 Entire malt and grass, 



BROWN Cow. 

 Milk in periods of five days. 

 Ibs. 



96 

 95 



Crushed barley, grass and hay, 



Crushed malt and hay, 



105 



110 



97 



96 



WHITE Cow. 



Milk in periods of five days. 



106 Ibs. 



94 " 



98 " 



104 " 



110 



The table exhibits, that with the entire barley, the milk diminished 

 during the second five days of the experiment, whilst with the crushed 

 barley it had a tendency to increase during each succeeding period. 



The degree of resistance, and sapidity of the food, apprise us when 

 mastication and insalivation have been sufficiently exerted. When this 

 is the case it is subjected to the next of the digestive processes. Some 

 physiologists have affirmed, that the uvula is the organ which judges 

 when the food is adapted for deglutition. M. Adelon, whose views are 

 generally worthy of great favour and attention, asserts, "that it judges 

 by its mode of sensibility, of the degree in which the aliment has been 

 prepared in the mouth; of the extent to which it has been chewed, im- 

 pregnated with saliva, and reduced to paste; and, according to the 

 impression it receives, it excites, sympathetically, the action of all 

 those parts; directs the convulsive contraction of the muscles that raise 

 the pharynx, even keeps the stomach on the alert, and disposes it to 

 receive favourably or to reject the food passing to it." Such a func- 

 tion would be anomalous. It is, indeed, impossible for us to conceive, 

 how so insignificant an organ could be possessed of those elevated 

 attributes. Observation, also, proves, that the notion is the offspring 

 of fancy. M. Magendie 3 asserts, that he has known several persons who 

 had entirely lost the uvula, either by venereal ulceration or by ex- 



1 Medicinische Zeitung, May 4, 1842; cited in British and For. Med. Rev., July, 1842, 

 p. 221. 



2 Experimental Researches on the Food of Animals, Amer. edit., New York, 1846. 



3 Op. cit., ii. 58. 



