CHAP. XXIV.] SOLUTION OF THE STOMACH AFTER DEATH. 1 99 



had been mechanically divided were most completely acted on ; the 

 substances contained in balls with large holes were more completely 

 acted on than those contained in balls with minute holes; and, 

 lastly, the various vegetable grains, as wheat, rye, barley, oats, and 

 peas, were least of all altered, having only become moistened and 

 swollen, while bone underwent no change. 



Dr. Stevens also introduced leeches and earthworms in his per- 

 forated spheres, and found that even these animals, though intro- 

 duced living, were dissolved as inanimate matters.* 



John Hunter made some observations which furnished an inter- 

 esting proof of the existence of a solvent gastric fluid. He was 

 struck with the condition of the stomach in two cases of sudden 

 and violent death. A man had his skull fractured by a single blow 

 of a poker : just before tKe accident he was in perfect health, and had 

 taken a hearty supper. Upon opening the abdomen, he found that 

 the stomach, though it still contained a good deal, was dissolved at 

 its great end, and a considerable part of its contents lay loose in the 

 general cavity of the belly ; a circumstance, he adds, which puzzled 

 him very much. The second instance was in a man who died at 

 St. George's Hospital a few hours after receiving a blow on his 

 head which fractured his skull. In both these cases the solution 

 was at the splenic end of the stomach ; the edges of the opening 

 and the mucous membrane for some distance within were half dis- 

 solved, "very much," says Hunter, "like that kind of digestion 

 which fleshy parts undergo when half digested in a living sto- 

 mach, or when acted upon by a caustic alkali, viz., pulpy, tender, 

 ragged." 



" In these cases," Mr. Hunter adds, " the contents of the stomach 

 are generally found loose in the cavity of the abdomen about the 

 spleen and diaphragm; and in many subjects the influence of this 

 digestive power extends much further than through the stomach. I 

 have often found, that, after the stomach had been dissolved at the 

 usual place, its contents let loose had come into contact with the 

 spleen and diaphragm, had dissolved the diaphragm quite through, 

 and had partly affected the adjacent side of the spleen ; so that what 

 had been contained in the stomach was found in the cavity of the 

 thorax, and had even affected the lungs to a small degree." 



" There are very few dead bodies in which the stomach at its 

 great end is not in some degree digested ; and one who is acquainted 

 with dissection can easily trace these gradations. To be sensible of 



* De Alimentorum Concoctione, Edin. 1777 (in Smellie's Thes. Med.). 



