136 LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 



are distending the stomach. Is it possible, I ask, 

 that healthy chyle and sound blood can be formed 

 out of such a villainous compound of nastiness 

 as this? 



As soon as this vile compound reaches the 

 bowels, it will generally be expelled by them with 

 violence : and this is the way in which bowel com- 

 plaints are so often produced by some sorts of fish, 

 and fresh pork, when eaten by persons whose sto- 

 machs are too weak to furnish a sufficient quantity 

 of gastric juice to reduce them to chyme before 

 they have had time to run into putrefaction ; and 

 the wind which such persons discharge by the mouth, 

 after eating, consists of the offensive gases above 

 mentioned. Strong, healthy stomachs pour out 

 their gastric juice so rapidly and abundantly, that the 

 whole meal is reduced to chyme before the process 

 of putrefaction has had time to begin. Now let us 

 proceed. 



The food, having been properly acted upon by the 

 gastric juice of the stomach, is now no longer food, 

 but a bland, smooth, homogeneous semi-fluid, called 

 chyme ; which, quitting the upper part of the sto- 

 mach, flows downward, to the lower extremity that 

 part where the stomach is joined to the bowels. 

 This junction of the lower extremity of the stomach 



