LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 27 



with all its stewing derivatives, and banished it 

 from our own to the cook's vocabulary, to which 

 alone it properly belongs, you will not be sur- 

 prised when I tell you, that the stomach and bowels 

 are by no means the only assimilating organs we 

 possess. Every organ which is concerned in the 

 nutrition of the body and without a healthy state 

 of which organ, nutrition cannot be properly per- 

 formed has a right to be called an assimilating or 

 nutritive organ. I need not tell you that nutrition 

 and assimilation are the same thing. Assimilation 

 completed is nutrition completed ; and the several 

 assimilating changes in the food are only so many 

 nutritive steps towards the completion of the pro- 

 cess of nutrition. 



I shall presently take a meal of food, and trace 

 it, or rather follow it, through all its changes, until 

 it has become assimilated, that is, until it has 

 become part of the living body. In doing this, 

 you will learn what are the assimilating or nutritive 

 organs, what is the office of each, what the changes 

 which these organs severally effect in the food, and 

 in what manner they accomplish these changes. 



It will be convenient to state here, that two 

 kinds of blood are contained in the body, differing 



from each other as much as any two things can 

 c 2 



