09 



siure the food in the stomach of these animals 

 ivas always found unchanged if the biliary duct 

 was tied up,; but if he administered bile to them, 

 or untied the ligature, digestion was very soon 

 performed. But even should these observations 

 and conclusions be found correct, as they regard 

 the amphibia, the case is still different in the 

 mammalia; for we have many instances of per- 

 fectly prepared chyme being thrown up, in which 

 no sign of bile has been perceived, and when bile 

 at any time is met with in the human stomach, it 

 is always, according to well-established experi- 

 ence, a certain sign of disease. 



EVERARB HOME has lately endeavoured to 

 prove, that the stomach, during the time of di- 

 gestion, is kept divided*into two parts by its mus- 

 cular fibres. He supposed that the portion nearer 

 to the throat is destined to contain liquid nutri- 

 ments, and that in the more remote the solid nutri-, 

 fious substances are to be dissolved. The object 

 of this division of the stomach, during the pro- 

 cess of digestion, which certainly seems not very 

 probable, he supposes to be, to convey the greater 

 part of those fluids through an unknown channel 

 from the stomach into the spleen, that they may 

 mix with the blood more speedily, than by the 



