112 



ANIMAL FUNCTIONS. 



Bur that these can only be employed as adjuvants to a 

 more nutritive diet, is shown by the fact, that whoever 

 undertakes to live exclusively on such food will soon find 

 his muscular powers in a condition to require other sup- 

 port ; and yet of the natural productions, it would seem 

 that the pithy and succulent fruits would afford the most 

 wholesome nourishment. 



323. It is not denied, that many races of men have 

 lived, and do still contrive to subsist on food taken in its 

 uncooked state j but it is also true that such races are 

 generally indolent in their habits, stinted in their growth, 

 feeble in muscular powers, and often nearly or quite idiots 

 in their intellects. 



324. The organization of man, therefore, appears abso- 

 lutely to require, both for the development of his animal 

 system, and the perfection of his intellectual powers, that 

 his food should, at least in part, consist of the flesh of 

 animals, prepared by cooking for the processes of masti- 

 cation and digestion, and without which it appears that 

 he cannot perform the muscular or intellectual duties 

 which his station in the scale of existence demands. 



ORGANS OF DIGESTION. 



325. Having described the organs by which the food is 

 prepared to pass into the stomach, it is now time to de- 

 scribe that organ as it is found in different animals, and to 

 point out more particularly than we have done, the pro- 

 cesses by which aliment is converted into nutrition. 



326. Hitman Stomach. The principal organ concerned 

 in digestion is the stomach. This is a large membranous 

 bag, situated obliquely across the lower part of the chest, 

 Fig. 79. Its shape is not unaptly compared to that of 

 the bellows of a bag-pipe. In the adult man, it is capa- 



Can man live on the unprepared productions of the earth or not ? Is 

 this the state in which he was designed to live? What effect does this 

 mode of living have on the human race ? What is the conclusion with 

 respect to the food of man ? What is the principal organ concerned in 

 digestion ? 



