326 The Outline of Science 



When the food touches the taste-buds on the tongue, the messages 

 multiply. The blood gathers in the wall of the stomach, and the 

 little tubes use its nourishing solution in order to make the 

 digestive juice which they pour out upon the food. With a large 

 part of our food the stomach does not deal. Digestion only 

 begins in it. Sugar, starches, and fats are passed on to the next 

 department. It is chiefly the nitrogenous or protein food- 

 flesh, fish, eggs, etc. that is here broken up still further and 

 prepared for absorption. The stomach itself absorbs only a 

 little of the food. A glass of wine as the head of an inexperi- 

 enced maiden may tell her is absorbed into the blood very 

 quickly, and part of the digested meat is passed into the blood- 

 system through the stomach; but the main part of the food 

 passes into the twenty-foot laboratory of the narrow "small 

 intestine," to be further digested and absorbed. 



It is amazing how few people have even a rudimentary 

 knowledge of this fundamental part of their being. Stomach and 

 bowels are hopelessly confused, and our poor organs, magnificent 

 as they are, are treated with inconceivable crudeness even by 

 educated people. It is easy for everybody now to obtain a list 

 giving the exact digestibility and nutritive value of different 

 kinds of foods. It should be known to everybody that the work 

 of these myriads of minute chemical laboratories in the stomach 

 has drawn the blood from the brain for a time, and it is unnatural 

 and unhealthy to attempt brainwork during or after a meal. 

 Half the physical misery of life could be cured by a little know- 

 ledge and restraint. 



4 

 A Remarkable Mechanism 



A brilliant physiologist, Professor Metchnikoff, startled us 

 some years ago by stating almost snorting that the human 

 alimentary system is a miserable out-of-date machinery that 

 ought to be scrapped. Even the stomach, he said, was super- 



