PHYSIOLOGY. 433 



poison them. Everything else is only a subordinate 

 operation. Now, the process of poisoning takes 

 place only in the blood. The saliva does not act without 

 inflicting a wound. 



2602. Strictly regarded, all saliva is poison. There 

 are examples of the saliva of birds, and even of men 

 when inflamed with passion, having acted as poison. 



2603. All other animal poisons, contagious principles 

 or miasmata, are analogous to the saliva, being partial 

 saliva?, partial poisons. Diseases of the skin produce 

 tegumentary poisons or salivse ; glandular diseases, glan- 

 dular poisons; nervous diseases, nervous poisons; dis- 

 eases of the lungs, pulmonary poisons. The saliva is the 

 blood-poison; the hydrocyanic acid, the nervous poison. 



2604. During mastication saliva imbues every atom 

 of the food, whereby the mass is throughout neutralized, 

 or annulled. 



Docimasy or Testing. 



2605. The oral digestion or that of the mouth cannot, 

 however, occur by itself, without its being a nervous pro- 

 cess also. The intestinal function taken up into the 

 nervous system is the taste. 



2606. Taste is the chemism resident in the head, the 

 digestion in the nerves. Taste therefore happens ac- 

 cording to the theory of the digestion or the cheim'sin. 



2607. The lowest element of the chemism is the 

 water, the highest repetition whereof in the earth is the 

 salt. The former is therefore the object of abdominal 

 digestion, the latter of nervous digestion. To taste is to 

 digest salt. In order to taste the salt, every part of the 

 food must be brought in contact with the tongue ; this 

 is only possible through comminution of the aliment by 

 means of the teeth. The mastication dissolves the ali- 

 ments mechanically into atoms, just as digestion will 

 resolve them chemically into " infusoria/' 



2608. That which should be digestible, must have a 

 saline character, must be soluble. The tongue is accord- 

 ingly the test-organ of the digestive process. 



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