VOL. XIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. , 8* 



intestine motion of its particles with the menstruum : but we have omitted that, 

 term, because it may be apt to lead us into an idea of a greater conflict than in 

 truth there really is. 



At the same time, when this intumescence and agitation of the matter is 

 made in the stomach, the contents of the neighbouring excretory ducts, viz. 

 the bile in the gall-bladder, the liver ducts, and the pancreatic juice in the 

 ductus pancreaticus, are compressed into the duodenum, through the extension 

 of the stomach itself : the refluent blood of the stomach at that instant being, 

 in some measure, retarded, whence the muscular fibres are more liable to be 

 contracted. 



Nor can we conceive how the liquor of the stomach, after uniting with the 

 saliva and aliment, should be still so plentifully excreted from the glands of 

 that part, as to irritate its internal membrane, and excite its muscular fibres to 

 contract, since the muscles of the abdomen would in like manner as in vomits 

 ing, be drawn into a consent of co- operating, and the aliment would be forcibly 

 rejected by the mouth : besides, should the liquor of the stomach prove so 

 prejudicial in chylification, what would the case be, immediately on the dis- 

 charge of all its contents. The irritation the stomach undergoes in hunger, 

 appears only to arise from an accumulation of the saliva in the stomach, in 

 conjunction with the liquor of the glands of that part ; hence it is we rather 

 discharge the spittle at that lime by the mouth, than to suffer any more of it 

 to descend into the stomach ; hence proceeds what is called the watering of the 

 mouth ; hence also, when the saliva is vitiated, the appetite is depraved. 



The stomach, by means of its muscular fibres, contracting itself, gradually 

 discharges its contents by the pylorus into the duodenum, in which gut, after a 

 small semicircular descent, it meets with the pancreatic juice and bile ; both 

 which joining with it, renders some parts of the aliment more fluid, by still 

 disuniting the grosser parts from the more pure; and here ch\Iification is made 

 perfect. The bile which abounds with lixivial salts, and is apt to mix with the 

 grosser parts of the concocted aliment, stimulates the guts, and deterges or 

 cleanses their cavities ; of the mucous matter, separated from the blood by glands 

 of the guts, and lodged in their cavities; which not only moistens the in -ides 

 of the guts, but defends the mouths of the lacteals from being injured by 

 foreign bodies, which often pass that way. 



The contents of the intestines moving still on by means of the peri'-taltic, or 

 >vornilike motion of the guts, whilst those thinner parts fitted f.r the pi ires of 

 the lacteal vessels, called chyle, is absorbed by them ; the thicker parts move 

 still more slowly on, and by the many stops they continually meet with by 

 the connivent valves, all the chyle or thinner parts are at lengtli entirely 



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