84 DIGESTION AND RESORPTION 



KHIGINE'S EXPERIMENTS ON DIGESTION BY A DOG 



1 ioo grammes boiled flesh, 100 grammes bread of wheat, and 600 grammes milk. 



Quanti 



grammes: 40 



hours obs.: 273 



caic. . ^09 



43 i o 

 280 416 



This circumstance may at the first glance seem 

 very peculiar, for we know from the experiments in 

 vitro that a small quantity of pepsin (together with 

 hydrochloric acid) is able to digest a great quantity 

 of food. Why does not Nature make use of this 

 property of peptic digestion ? It is easy to see that, 

 according to the rule of SCHUTZ for peptic digestion, 

 the length of time necessary for digesting a certain 

 quantity would increase nearly proportionally to the 

 square of this quantity. Therefore if 4-42 hours are 

 necessary for the digestion of ioo grammes of raw 

 flesh, a time about 16 times longer, i.e. 70 hours, 

 would be necessary for the digestion of 400 grammes, 

 and a meal of 1000 grammes would take 442 hours 



