282 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



we might assign to, or claim, for every flexure of the bowel 

 a kindred function, or kindred functions, and advance the 

 general opinion that the valvular structures, or mechanisms, 

 marking the beginning and end of its various intestinal 

 divisions, safeguarding the specific functional work of the 

 stomach, small and large intestines, are aided every instant 

 of their working time by a peristaltic flexuring of the bowel 

 tube, or intestinal canal whereby an effectual functional 

 treatment of the alimentary materials is obtained with the 

 greatest certainty, and the easiest passage, so far as dynamic 

 expenditure is concerned, along that canal peristalsis 

 maintaining, on the part of these materials, a position in 

 which " gravitation " can be made available to the greatest 

 extent, and consequently with the least dynamic expendi- 

 ture or waste on the part of the bowel musculature. Thus, 

 the peristaltic wave of muscular contraction of the bowel 

 wall carries on the flood of alimentary materials with 

 a greater, or lesser, approach to inclined, or horizontal, 

 wriggling and moving in a serpentine manner, and so 

 utilising for functional purposes every fraction of the pro- 

 longed intestinal mucosa, each great intestinal division, or 

 viscus, delivering to another, readily prepared, the material 

 for its specific functional work to the one great func- 

 tional end, that of the preparation of the food for nutritive 

 purposes, in which all the anatomical structural charac- 

 teristics of the alimentary canal, the physiological contriv- 

 ances, the dynamic expenditure, and the physico-chemical 

 interchanges of the alimentary materials combine with the 

 " ordinary statics and dynamics of nature " in preparing for 

 nutritive consumption and metabolism what experience and 

 reason dictate to each individual man and woman is the 

 food they require, or it may be they are compelled by 

 circumstances to take. 



The alimentary canal, as a circulatory apparatus, is surely 

 one of those transcendently adapted for its purpose, and 

 showing evidences of design of the most elaborate and 

 succinct character throughout every stage and division of 

 its entire extent ; indeed, it is only equalled by that which 

 is apparent throughout the whole extent of the posterior 

 limb of the embryonic neurenteric V, and an unmistakable 

 example of the truth : circulatio circulationum omnia circulatio. 



