DIGESTION. 189 



tained that this coagulating power belongs to 

 the stomach of every animal, wliich he exa- 

 mined for that purpose, from the most perfect 

 down to reptiles*; and Sir E. Home has pro- 

 secuted the enquiry with the same result, and 

 ascertained that this property is possessed by the 

 secretion from the gastric glands, Avhich commu- 

 nicates it to the adjacent membranes. t 



The gastric juice has also the remarkable 

 property of correcting putrefaction. This is par- 

 ticularly exemplified in animals that feed on 

 carrion, to whom this property is of great im- 

 portance, as it enables them to derive wholesome 



soups will not prove so nutritive when taken alone, as when 

 they are united with a certain proportion of solid food, capable 

 of being detained in the stomach, during a time sufficiently long 

 to allow of the whole undergoing the process of digestion. I was 

 led to this conclusion, not only from theory, but from actual 

 observation of what took place among the prisoners in the Mil- 

 bank Penitentiary, in 1823, when on the occasion of the extensive 

 prevalence of scorbutic dysentery in that prison. Dr. P. M. Latham 

 and myself were appointed to attend the sick, and enquire into 

 the origin of the disease. Among the causes which concurred 

 to produce this formidable malady, one of the most prominent 

 appeared to be an impoverished diet, consisting of a large 

 proportion of soups, on which the prisoners had subsisted for the 

 preceding eight months. A very full and perspicuous account 

 of that disease has been drawn up, with great ability, by my 

 friend Dr. P. M. Latham, and published under the title of " An 

 Account of the disease lately prevalent in the General Peniten- 

 tiary." London, 1825. 



* Observations on the Animal Economy, p. 172. 



t Phil. Trans, for 1813, p. 96. 



