456 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



element for the gastro-intestinal absorbents to work upon, 

 this common digestive element being known as chyme 

 and chyle, according to the stage of digestion reached, and 

 the amount of chemico-physical change undergone. After 

 its absorption, we may take it that the process of organic 

 assortment is in full operation, every step of it being 

 marked by a chemico-physiological elemental change and 

 organic evolution, resulting in sanguification, structural 

 deposition, and complete organisation, after which, by 

 inverse, or disorganic processes, the removal of the worn 

 and waste products of organisation is effected in perfect 

 order, and with vital regularity. 



A form of consistency, solid or liquid, is consistently 

 and consecutively maintained throughout the whole intra- 

 corporeal circulation of each of the food elements, one 

 or other of which may be experienced by each of them, as 

 they become utilised for organic purposes, or ultimately 

 detached for excretion. Solid and liquid represent the 

 consistency of the various new elements constituting the 

 ingesta, the various organic textures, or substances, repre- 

 senting the formed organic constituents of the living 

 organism, or the body ; and the various residual substances, 

 sold and liquid, eliminated from the ingesta and the egesta, 

 exactly balancing each other in physical weight, but 

 altered chemical proportion. It, therefore, follows that, 

 any departure from this condition of physical exactitude, 

 must be obviated, else a condition of pathological disturb- 

 ance must result in proportion to the amount of departure 

 from the physiological standard. 



In order that that standard, the physiological, should be 

 maintained, the quantity and quality of the ingesta must 

 be rigorously meted out by the presiding physiological 

 regulators, which here are called appetites, and are known 

 by the names of hunger and thirst, the first of which 

 is responsible for the regulation of the solid ingesta, and 

 the latter for that of the liquid ; both, however, being 

 subject, in the human species, to the oversight of reason 

 and accumulated experience, acquired and inherited. 



