ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 



after death was written by Hunter at the desire of 

 Sir John Pringle, when he was president of the Royal 

 Society, and the circumstance which led to this is as 

 follows: " I was opening, in his presence, the body of a 

 patient of his own, where the stomach was in part 

 dissolved, which appeared to him very unaccountable, 

 as there had been no previous symptom that could 

 have led him to suspect any disease in the stomach. I 

 took that opportunity of giving him my ideas respecting 

 it, and told him that I had long been making experi- 

 ments on digestion, and considered this as one of the 

 facts which proved a converting power in the gastric 

 juice. . . . There are a great many powers in nature 

 which the living principle does not enable the animal 

 matter, with which it is combined, to resist viz., the 

 mechanical and most of the strongest chemical solv- 

 ents. It renders it, however, capable of resisting the 

 powers of fermentation, digestion, and perhaps several 

 others, which are well known to act on the same matter 

 when deprived of the living principle and entirely to 

 decompose it." 



Hunter concludes his paper with the following para- 

 graph: "These appearances throw considerable light 

 on the principle of digestion, and show that it is neither 

 a mechanical power, nor contractions of the stomach, 

 nor heat, but something secreted in the coats of the 

 stomach, and thrown into its cavity, which there 

 animalizes the food or assimilates it to the nature of 

 the blood. The power of this juice is confined or lim- 

 ited to certain substances, especially of the vegetable 

 and animal kingdoms; and although this menstruum 

 is capable of acting independently of the stomach, 



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