592 DIGESTION. 



The cases of what are termed digestion of the stomach after death 

 afford us, likewise, remarkable examples of the presence of some power- 

 ful agent in the stomach; as well as of the resistance to chemical 

 action, offered by living organs. Powerful as the action of the gastric 

 juice may be, in dissolving alimentary substances, it does not exert it 

 upon the coats of the stomach during life. Being endowed with vitality, 

 they effectually resist it. But when that viscus has lost its vitality, 

 its parietes yield to the chemical power of the contained juices, and 

 become softened, and, in part, destroyed. M. Hunter 1 found the lining 

 membrane of the stomach destroyed, in several parts, in the body of a 

 criminal, who, for some time before his execution, had been prevailed 

 upon, in consideration of a sum of money, to abstain from food. Since 

 Hunter's time, numerous examples have occurred, and been recorded 

 by Messrs. Baillie, Allan Burns, Haviland, Grimaud, Pascalis, Cheese- 

 man, J. B. Beck, Chaussier, Yelloly, Gardner, Treviranus, Godecke, 

 Jager, Carswell, and others. 2 The fact is of importance in medical 

 jurisprudence; and, until a better acquaintance with the subject, would, 

 doubtless, have been set down as strong corroborative evidence in cases 

 of suspected poisoning. It is now established that solution of the sto- 

 mach may take place after death, without there being reason for sup- 

 posing that any thing noxious had been swallowed. 



The experiments of Drs. Wilson Philip 3 and Carswell 4 are corro- 

 borative of this physiological action on the gastric juice. On open- 

 ing the abdomen of rabbits, that had been killed immediately after 

 having eaten, and allowed to lie undisturbed for some time before ex- 

 amination, the former found the great end of the stomach soft, eaten 

 through, and sometimes altogether consumed' the chyme being covered 

 only by the peritoneal coat, or lying quite bare for the space of an 

 inch and a half in diameter: and, in this last case, a part of the con- 

 tiguous intestines was also destroyed; whilst the cabbage, which the 

 animal had just taken, lay in the centre of the stomach unchanged, if 

 we except the alteration that had taken place, in the external parts of 

 the mass it had formed, in consequence of imbibing gastric fluid from 

 the half-digested food in contact with it. Why the perforation takes 

 place, without the food being digested, is thus explained by Dr. Philip. 

 Soon after death, the motions of the stomach, which are constantly 

 carrying on the most digested food towards the pylorus, cease. The 

 food that lies next to the surface of the stomach, thus becomes fully 

 saturated with gastric fluid; neutralizes no more; and no new food 

 being presented to the fluid it acts on the stomach itself, now deprived 

 of life, and equally subjected to its action with other dead animal matter. 

 It is extremely remarkable, however, that the gastric fluid of the rab- 



1 Phil. Transact., Ixii.; and Observations on certain parts of the Animal Economy, with 

 notes by Prof. Owen, Amer. edit., p. 144, Philad., 1840. 



2 Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, 6th edit., ii. 311, Albany, 1838; Carswell's Path. Anat., 

 No. 5, Lond., 1833; and T. Wilkinson King, Guy's Hospital Reports, vii. 139, Lond., 1842; 

 and a case communicated to the author by Dr. Thomas M. Flint, in which the stomach had 

 separated from the oesophagus, recorded in Med. Examiner, p. 715, for December, 1848. 



3 Treatise on Indigestion, Lond., 1821. 



4 Ibid, and Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, Oct., 1830; and art. Perforation of the Hollow 

 Viscera, in Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, P. xvi. p. 272, Lond., 1833. 



