THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION. 



I might now pass to Voltaic Electricity, and show, 

 from the testimony of Biot, Galvani, and Haiiy, that 

 this new branch of science, a branch which, under the 

 culture of Davy and his numerous successors, has been 

 made to contribute largely to our store of chemical and 

 magnetic facts and doctrines, may be traced to what 

 Bacon terms " the fortune of experiment." But, lest I 

 should far overstep the appropriate bounds of this 

 address, I must satisfy myself with this mere allusion, 

 and proceed to my last selection. 



In Physiology, as in Physics, we have occasionally 

 been more indebted to accident to a happy, though 

 perhaps at first an erroneous thought than to the pro- 

 foundest study, or the best conducted train of experi- 

 ments. One of the most curious, as well as of the most 

 important functions of the animal economy, is that of 

 digestion, the real nature of which was fallen upon in 

 this manner. Considering the comparatively slender 

 texture of the stomach, and the toughness and solidity 

 of the substances it is capable of digesting, it cannot 

 appear surprising that mankind should have indulged in 

 a variety of theories, and run into a variety of errors, in 

 accounting for its mode of action. Empedocles and 

 Hippocrates ascribed the process to a power, possessed 

 by the stomach, of decomposing the food by a rapid 



yant le siecle present, et la mediocrite atteignant a ce qu'il avait de- 

 couvert dans celui qui prec^dait, on apprendra que la nature nous a donne 

 les moyens d'epargner le temps et de manager 1'attention, et qu'il 

 n'existe aucune raison de croire que ces moyens puissent avoir un terme. 

 On verra qu'au moment ou une multitude de solutions particulieres, de 

 faits isoles, commencent a epuiser 1'attention, a fatiguer la memoire, ces 

 theories dispersees viennent se perdre dans une methode generale, tous 

 les faits se reunir dans un fait unique, et que ces generalisations, ces 

 reunions repetees n'ont, comme les multiplications successives d'un 

 aombre par lui-meme, d'autre limite qu'un infini auquel il est impossible 

 d'atteindre." Condorcet Sur I' Instruction PubUque. 



