ABSORPTION FROM THE STOMACH. 167 



Absorption from the Stomach is more important. Food 

 stays there a considerable time, and a good deal of the 

 substances mentioned above as being absorbed to a slight 

 degree on their way to the stomach, are taken up to a 

 much greater extent by the mucous membrane of the 

 stomach itself and passed on into the general blood current. 

 In addition, a large proportion of albuminous food is 

 turned in the stomach into peptones, which can be and 

 are readily absorbed by the vessels of the gastric mucous 

 membrane. 



Absorption from the Small Intestine is by far the most 

 important in bringing nutritive matters into the body. 

 The stomach is an organ rather of digestion than absorp- 

 tion; the small intestine, on the other hand, is specially 

 constructed to absorb. Its valvulae conniventes delay the 

 progress of the food mass which stagnates in the hollows 

 between them; and its innumerable villi, with their blood- 

 vessels and lymphatics (p. 147), reach out, like so many 

 rootlets, into the chyle and take it up. 



The sugars reaching the small intestine or formed in it 

 are absorbed mainly by the blood-vessels and carried to the 

 liver, where they are turned into glycogen (p. 151), which is 

 heaped up in the liver during digestion, and slowly given 

 out to the blood, as its sugar is used up gradually before 

 the next meal. The peptones passed into the intes- 

 tine from the stomach, or formed in it by the action of the 



Why does more absorption take place from the stomach? Name 

 things absorbed from both mouth and stomach? What food matters 

 are first absorbed from the stomach? 



Where does the most important food absorption occur? What 

 structural peculiarities of the small intestine peculiarly fit it for ab- 

 sorbing? 



What vessels absorb sugars in the small intestine? To what organ 

 are these sugars conveyed? What there becomes of them? 



