210 The Physiology of Digestion [lect. 



indeed, in some respects, of all time. Born in 1683 at Rochelle 

 in France, he was educated for the profession of the law ; 

 but possessed of an ample fortune he was under no need 

 to follow that or any other bread-winning career. Removing 

 to Paris at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he used 

 the opportunities which his abundant means afforded him to 

 carry out many and varied scientific investigations. Of most of 

 these I have no occasion to speak here. I need not dwell on 

 his labours in connection with the manufacture of steel. I 

 need not speak of the thermometer which bears his name, and 

 which he invented in 1731. Nor shall I here even discuss his 

 great work on Insects, published during the years 1734 — 1742, 

 though this contains much of physiological interest. I must 

 content myself with pointing out the important results em- 

 bodied in his treatises on the Digestion of Birds (Sur la 

 Digestion des Oiseaux) which appeared in the " Memoirs of 

 "the Academy of Science of Paris" in 1752. 



The problem which he put before himself in this research 

 was : — Are the changes which the food undergoes in the stomach 

 to be regarded as the results of mere trituration, or of a sort of 

 putrefaction, or are they those of solution, effected in some way 

 or other by means of the gastric juice secreted by the stomach ? 

 Having in his possession a Kite he took advantage of its well- 

 known habit of rejecting from its stomach things swallowed, 

 such as feathers, which it could not digest. He made use 

 of small metal tubes open at both ends, save that each end 

 was secured with a grating made of threads or fine wire. He 

 gave the Kite some of these tubes, filled with pieces of meat, 

 and he found that when they were rejected the meat had been 

 partially dissolved, but exhibited no odour or other signs of 

 putrefaction. Small fragments of bone similarly introduced 

 into the stomach in metal tubes were also found to be dissolved. 

 The pieces of bone were only partially dissolved, but by giving 

 the same pieces of bone a second and a third time in the 

 same way he found that at last they were almost completely 

 dissolved. But while meat and bone were thus dissolved, 

 vegetable grains or flour similarly exposed in tubes to the 

 action of the stomach, seemed to be little altered. He further 

 observed that the tubes when rejected were more or less filled 



