222 ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY. [LESSON 65. 



Hot bread never digests at all ; after a long season of working 

 and tumbling about the stomach, it will begin to ferment, and in the 

 end, having submitted the organ to a great amount of fatigue, be 

 finally passed out of the stomach as a refractory and unmanageable 

 mass. But it never becomes assimilated, or absorbed by those organs 

 destined to appropriate nutriment. 



Another remarkable fact has been developed, which proves the 

 truth of the old adage, " laugh and grow fat." It has been satisfac- 

 torily established that mirthfulness at and after a meal greatly facili- 

 tates digestion. On the other hand, if this man be made angry at 

 or immediately subsequent to a meal, bile rushes into the stomach 

 in a perfect stream, and digestion is retarded for some hours, and at 

 last feebly performed. 



975. Besides hot, there is another form of bread demanding 

 notice, and the evils in connection with it are easy of demonstration ; 

 for example : the bones of a young Child are gelatinous (com- 

 posed of jelly), or, at the best, cartilaginous (gristly) ; to become 

 bone, they require the phosphate of lime to be deposited in the 

 meshes or interstices of the tissue. 



976. Wheat contains the phosphate of lime, which, if allowed to 

 remain as such, would be duly appropriated ; but if alum form a 

 constituent of bread, this earth is neutralized, for a mutual decompo- 

 sition takes place between it and the constituents of alum. Alum is 

 the earth alumina, in combination with sulphuric acid ; but if phos- 

 phate of lime be present, the sulphuric acid having more affinity for 

 lime, quits the alumina, and forms a new compound sulphate of 

 lime, or plaster of Paris. The phosphoric acid and alumina are both 

 set free, and in the way of nutrition. Children fed upon bread thus 

 made are liable to rickets, caries (rotting) of the teeth, and a still 

 worse disease known as " spina ventosa," in which very painful tu- 

 mors are formed, sometimes as large as a human head. 



977. Another very objectionable substance is in general use, to 

 supersede eggs, or yeast saleratus ; it is only necessary to remind 

 the reader, that this agent is simply a modified pearlash, which is a 

 poison. 



978. But it is not only in the baker's bread that we go wrong ; it 

 has been already remarked, that the hot biscuits in common and daily 

 use are most objectionable, and no stomach can possibly digest them ; 

 moreover, they are rarely sufficiently baked. 



979. Every good housewife knows, that whilst a loaf from the 

 baker is scarcely eatable on the second day, that her own sweet, 



