190 PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. 



albumoses and peptones and the rapidity with which the food is 

 converted into chyme, or at least so prepared that it may easily 

 pass into the intestines. This distinction is especially important 

 from a practical standpoint. When a proper food is to be decided 

 upon in cases of diminished stomachic digestion, it is important to 

 select such foods as, independent of the difficulty or ease with 

 which their proteid is peptonized, leave the stomach easily and 

 quickly, and which require as little action as possible on the part 

 of this organ. From this point of view those foods, as a rule, are 

 most digestible which are fluid from the start or may be easily 

 liquefied in the stomach; but these foods are not always the most 

 digestible in the sense that their proteid is most easily peptonized. 

 As an example, hard-boiled white of egg is more easily peptonized 

 than fluid white of egg at a degree of acidity of 1-2 p. m. HC1 ; 

 nevertheless we consider, and justly, that an unboiled or soft-boiled 

 egg is easier to digest than a hard-boiled one. Likewise uncooked 

 meat, when it is not chopped very fine, is not more quickly but 

 more slowly peptonized by the gastric juice than the cooked, but if 

 it is divided sufficiently fine it is often more quickly peptonized 

 than the cooked. 



The greater or less facility with which the different albuminous 

 foods are peptonized by the gastric juice has been comparatively 

 little studied, and as the conditions in the stomach are more com- 

 plicated, results obtained with artificial gastric juice are often of 

 no value for the practising physician and should in any case be 

 used only with the greatest caution. Under these circumstances 

 we cannot enter more deeply into this subject, but the reader is 

 referred to text-books on dietetics and the theory of foods. 



As our knowledge of the digestibility of the different foods in 

 the stomach is slight and dubious so also our knowledge of the 

 action of other bodies, such as alcoholic drinks, bitter principles, 

 spices, etc., on the natural digestion is very uncertain and imper- 

 fect. The difficulties which stand in the way of this kind of in- 

 vestigation are very great, and therefore the results obtained thus 

 far are often ambiguous or conflict with each other. For example, 

 one investigator has seen that small quantities of alcohol or alcoholic 

 drinks do not prevent but rather facilitate digestion ; others 

 observe only a preventive action ; while other investigators believe 



