LECTURE VIII. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DIGESTION IN THE 

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



The story, even in outline., of the progress of Physiology in 

 the seventeenth century has in the preceding lectures been 

 told in part only. Men's minds in that century were busy with 

 problems of the animal body besides those of digestion and 

 breathing; and I have yet to speak of other labours carried 

 out by men on whom I have already dwelt, as well as of labours 

 carried out by men of whom as yet I have said little or nothing. 

 The division, however, of the labour of inquiry which the 

 progress of science brought about as the years ran on renders it 

 desirable that I should complete the stories of the progress of 

 our knowledge of digestion and respiration, so far as I propose 

 to carry them, before I speak of the advances made in other 

 branches of physiology. I therefore propose to devote the 

 present lecture to an account of the more striking researches in 

 digestion which were carried out in the eighteenth century. 



In a preceding lecture I spoke of two men as exerting, 

 through their large chemical knowledge, an important influence 

 on the ideas concerning the chemical problems of physiology at 

 the latter end of the seventeenth and in the early years of the 

 eighteenth century. On one of these, George Ernest Stahl, I 

 have already dwelt. 



The other man was Hermann Boerhaave, who was born on 

 the 3 1st December, 1668, four years before Sylvius's death, at 

 Voorhout, near Leyden. The son of a minister he was brought 



