604 DIGESTION. 



at the author's suggestion, into the stomach through the fistulous open- 

 ing in the subject of Dr. Beaumont's case; whilst other portions were 

 digested artificially in gastric juice obtained from the same individual. 

 The solutions presented the same appearance, and were similarly 

 affected by reagents ; and in all cases, whether the digestion was arti- 

 ficial or real, the proximate principles could be thrown down in the 

 state of gelatin, fibrin or albumen, as the case might be. These experi- 

 ments, so far as they go, justify the conclusion, that the digestive 

 process in the stomach is a simple solution or division of alimentary 

 substances, and an admixture with the mucous secretions of that organ, 

 and the various fluids from the supra-diaphragmatic portion of the 

 digestive tube. With regard to the existence of the other gastric opera- 

 tions described by Dr. Prout, well-founded doubts may be entertained. 

 To his proposition that, whatever may be the nature of the food, the 

 general composition and character of the chyle remain always the 

 same, no objection can be urged; but, admitting its accuracy, it by no 

 means follows, that the conversion must be effected in the stomach, or 

 that any organizing or vitalizing powers are exerted upon the chyme in 

 that organ. On the contrary, it appears to us, that the essential changes 

 effected on solid aliment in the stomach are of a purely physical charac- 

 ter, so as to adapt it for the separation of the chylous portion in the 

 intestines by organs whose vital endowments and influences cannot be 

 contested. Dr. T. J. Todd 1 is disposed to believe, from his experiments 

 on artificial digestion, that the various vegetable and animal substances 

 subjected to the action of the digestive fluids at the ordinary tempera- 

 ture of the atmosphere are, in all instances, reduced not to their 

 cJiymical, but to their organic elements ; and he is of opinion, that this 

 applies equally to digestion in the stomach. 



From what has been already shown of the close approximation to 

 each other in chemical composition of several of the compounds of organi- 

 zation, it may be understood, that many vegetable principles might be 

 converted into animal principles without any material change of com- 

 position. They might all perhaps be changed into albumen, from which, 

 as elsewhere seen, fibrin differs but little except in its organizable power. 

 Saccharine matters it has been conceived may be converted, in the 

 digestive tube, partly into albumen, and partly into oleaginous matter, 

 the nitrogen of the former being furnished, according to some, by the 

 pepsin or by some highly nitrogenized substance secreted in the stomach 

 or duodenum or both; 2 but whether such conversion really occurs is 

 exceedingly questionable. The oleaginous matters themselves are ab- 

 sorbed by simple imbibition as an emulsion formed by their union with 

 the alkali of the pancreatic fluid. 3 



On the whole, in the present state of our knowledge of this import- 

 ant function, we are perhaps justified in concluding : First. That by 

 the operation of the gastric secretions the nitrogenized principles of the 

 food, whether animal or vegetable, are dissolved in the stomach. Se- 



1 Brit. Annals of Medicine, Jan., 1837. 



2 Prout, on the Stomach and Urinary Diseases, p. xxviii., note. 



3 Matteucci, Lectures on the Physical Phenomena of Living Beings, by Pereira, Amer. 

 edit., p. 110, Philad., 1848, and C. Bernard, Archives Generates, xix. 60, cited in British and 

 Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, p. 528, April, 1849. 



