168 THE VITAL FUNCTIONS. 



that this coagulating power belongs to the stomach 

 of every animal, which he examined for that pur- 

 pose, 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. f 



The gastric juice has also the remarkable pro- 

 perty of correcting putrefaction. This is particu- 

 larly exemplified in animals that feed on carrion, 

 to whom this property is of great importance, as it 

 enables them to derive wholesome nourishment 

 from materials which would otherwise taint the 

 whole system with their poison, and soon prove 

 destructive to life. 



coagulated by the stomach, will not be sufficiently acted upon by 

 that organ to be properly digested, and will not only afford compa- 

 ratively little nourishment, but be very liable to produce disorder of 

 the alimentary canal. Thus 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 Milbank 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 ap- 

 peared 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 puljlished under the title of "An Account of the 

 disease lately prevalent iu the General Penitentiary." London, 

 1825. 



* Observations on the Animal Economy, p. 172. 



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



