DIGESTION. 189 



tained that this coagulating power belongs to 

 the stomach of every animal, which he exa- 

 mined for that purpose, from the most perfect 

 down to reptiles.* Sir E. Home has prosecuted 

 the inquiry with the same result, and ascertained 

 that this property is possessed by the secretion 

 from the gastric glands, which communicates 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 

 earrion, to whom this property is of great im- 

 portance, as it enables them to derive wholesome 

 nourishment from materials which would other- 

 wise taint the whole system with their poison, 

 and soon prove destructive to life. 



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 inquire 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. 



