158 THE HUMAN BODY. 



carried mucli further in the stomach; and the food-mass, 

 mixed with much gastric secretion, becomes reduced to the 

 consistency of a thick soup, usually of a grayish color. In 

 this state it is called chyme. 



The Chyme contains, after an ordinary meal, a consid- 

 erable quantity of peptones, which are in great part gradually 

 absorbed into the blood and lymphatic vessels of the gastric 

 mucous membrane and carried off, along with other dissolved 

 and dialyzable bodies for example, salts and sugar. 

 After the food has remained in the stomach some time (one 

 and a half to two hours) the chyme begins to be passed 

 on into the intestine in successive portions. The p} T loric 

 sphincter relaxes at intervals, and the rest of the stomach, 

 contracting ut the same moment, injects a quantity of 

 chyme into the duodenum; this is repeated frequently, the 

 larger undigested fragments being at first unable to pass the 

 orifice. At the end of three or four hours after an ordinary 

 meal the stomach is quite emptied, the pyloric sphincter 

 finally relaxing to such an extent as to allow any larger in- 

 digestible masses, which the gastric juice has not broken 

 down, to be squeezed into the intestine.* 



The Chyle, When the chyme passes into the duodenum 

 it finds preparation made for it. The pancreas commences 

 to secrete as soon as food enters the stomach; hence a 

 quantity of its secretion is already accumulated in the intes- 

 tine when the chyme enters. The gall-bladder is distended 



What is chyme? What things would be found in chyme after 

 an ordinary meal? When does chyme begin to be sent on to the in- 

 testine? How? How soon is the stomach completely emptied after a 

 meal? What has accumulated in the small intestine when the chyme 

 reaches it ? 



* Several of the above facts were first observed on a Canadian trapper, 

 Alexis St. Martin, who as a result of a gunshot wound had a permanent opening 

 from the surface of the abdomen to the interior of the stomach. 



