30 PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALTH. 



digestive process is by this means very materially hast- 

 ened. 



48. The food is first mixed with and then dissolved in the 

 gastric juice. Then all the peculiarities of the articles which 

 we have eaten are lost. No trace of the original form of the 

 digestible and digested matter can be found. Meat, bread, 

 fruits all are reduced to one homogeneous pulp. Whatever 

 we may have eaten, the pulp, so far as we can discover, is 

 the same. When we examine the digested food in the 

 stomach of the man whose diet is mostly meat, in that of 

 another whose diet is exclusively bread, and in that of the 

 child, whose whole nutriment is milk, the eye and the 

 fingers perceive no difference. This process is termed 

 chymificatian ; and the new pulp is called chyme, which is 

 now ready to pass from the stomach to its second stage of 

 digestion in the duodenum. 



49. This process of digestion requires the natural heat of 

 the animal body. Dr. Beaumont passed the thermometer 

 frequently into St. Martin's stomach, and found that its tem- 

 perature was 100, which is two degrees higher than the 

 natural temperature of the body. He also found that cold 

 retarded the process of digestion. He threw into the stom- 

 ach a single gill of water at the temperature of 50, which 

 reduced the temperature of the whole contents of the stom- 

 ach 30, that is, down to 70. Digestion was then sus- 

 penfded, until the temperature was elevated to its natural 

 standard. 



50. Dr. Beaumont took a quantity of the gastric juice 

 from St. Martin, and divided it into two portions. He put 

 some pieces of meat into one portion of this, cooled down to 

 34, and some into another portion, warmed to 100, the 

 natural temperature of the stomach during digestion. These 

 were kept at these temperatures for many hours. At the 

 same time St. Martin swallowed meat of the same kind. In 

 one hour the meat in the stomach was partially chy mined ; 

 that in the warm gastric juice out of the stomach was nearly 

 in the same condition, while that in the cold gastric juice 



