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now followed it twenty years. His stomach is so much distended, that he can swallow 

 several stones at a time ; and these may be not only plainly felt, but may be heard, 

 whenever the hypogastric region is struck." 



Stevens used hollow silver spheres perforated with fine holes, 

 which he filled with all sorts of food, animal and vegetable, fish and 

 fowl, roast and boiled, even live worms and leeches, and these spheres 

 were swallowed by this person, and when voided — usually in from 

 twenty to forty hours — any changes in the nature and weight of the 

 contents were noticed. The Hussar left Edinburgh, and Stevens had 

 recourse to dogs and ruminants. He also used ivory balls and was 

 surprised to find that they were dissolved by the gastric juice of a 

 whelp. He practically arrived at the same results as Spallanzani, 

 for his experiments 



" show that digestion is not the effect of heat, trituration, putrefaction, or 

 fermentation alone but of a powerful solvent, secreted by the coats of the stomach 

 which converts the aliment into a fluid resembling blood. If it should be asked what 

 defends the organ itself, T would answer that it is the vital principle, as Mr. Hunter's 

 observations show ; after death it is dissolved as readily as any other inanimate 

 substance." 



Here we must again refer to JOHN HUNTEli, who found 

 digestion of the posterior wall of the stomach in several cases where 

 the person had died suddenly, usually after a full meal. The first 

 case was recorded at the instance of Sir John Pringle. Others 

 after fracture of skull, i.e, after sudden violent death, he met with 

 in his own practice. His results he recorded in On the Stomach Itself 

 being digested after death, in Phil. Trans. LXIL, p. 447, 1772. He 

 recurs to this subject in a paper entitled Some Observations on Digestion 

 in his Observations on certain parts of the Animal Economy, dated 

 from Leicester Square, 1786. 



All his observations led him to a more decided confirmation of 

 his views of the existence of a " vital principle." He saw clearly 

 enough that " the digestion of the wall of the stomach after death 

 shows that digestion neither depends on a mechanical power — the 

 old trituration — nor contraction of the stomach, nor on heat, but on 

 something secreted in the coats of the stomach . . ." It 

 remained for Bernard to give an excellent and simple demonstration 

 of this process in a rabbit killed during digestion. Hunter's idea of 

 a living hand and a dead one introduced into the stomach was met 

 in a different way many years later by Bernard, who used the leg of 

 a frog, and F. W. Pavy, who used the ears of a rabbit ; but these 

 experiments were only possible after the invention of gastric fistuhe. 



These Observations are most interesting, but Hunter goes out of 

 his way to say ungracious things of Spallanzani and others. He 

 speaks of the nature of their education — " of views that few will sub- 

 scribe to " — of the clergy as philosophers and physiologists. He must 



