vin] in the Eighteenth Century. 223 



carnivora at least the juice though neutral when the animal 

 is starving, is undoubtedly indeed strongly acid after it has 

 been fed, fell on barren ground, and failed to produce the fruit 

 which otherwise it might. 



During the two centuries, the seventeenth and the eighteenth, 

 physiological inquirers, as we have seen, swayed now in one 

 direction, by views of chemical fermentation or effervescence, 

 now in another direction by views of mechanical trituration, 

 had come in the end to the conclusion that digestion was in 

 the main a process of solution of a peculiar character begun 

 and chiefly carried out in the stomach though assisted by 

 minor subsequent changes taking place along the intestines. 

 They who were under the influence of the Stahlian vitalistic 

 doctrines, and these were perhaps the more numerous, held the 

 change to be the commencement of, to be the first step in, 

 the conversion of dead food into living flesh and blood, and 

 spoke of it as an animalisation. They who were not of that 

 school were content to/ speak of it as a change differing 

 from ordinary chemical change, without being able to define 

 its exact characters. It was left for the nineteenth century 

 to throw a new light on the nature of the gastric changes and 

 at the same time to shew that what took place in the stomach 

 was not the whole of digestion, but only the first of a series of 

 profound changes taking place along nearly the whole length 

 of the alimentary canal. 



