350 THE HUMAN BODY. 



steak, will undergo changes in the stomach and intestine 

 and be dissolved and absorbed. 



The substances leaving the alimentary canal after such a 

 meal would be, primarily, the indigestible cellulose and 

 elastin, together with some water. But there might be in 

 addition some unabsorbed fats, starch, and salts. To this 

 would be added, in the alimentary canal, mucin, some of 

 the ferments of the digestive secretions, some slightly 

 altered bile pigments, and other bodies excreted by the 

 large intestine. 



Dyspepsia is the common name of a number of diseased 

 conditions attended with loss of appetite or troublesome 

 digestion. Being often unattended with acute pain, and 

 if it kills at all doing so very slowly, it is pre-eminently 

 suited for treatment by domestic quackery. In reality, 

 however, the immediate cause of the symptoms, and the 

 treatment called for, may vary widely; and their detection 

 and the choice of the proper remedial agents often call for 

 more than ordinary medical skill. A fe\v of the more com- 

 mon forms of dyspepsia may be mentioned here, with their 

 proximate causes, not in order to enable people to under- 

 take the rash experiment of dosing themselves, but to show 

 how wide a chance there is for any unskilled treatment to 

 miss its end, and do more harm than good. 



Appetite is primarily due to a condition of the mucous 

 membrane of the stomach which, in health, comes on after 

 a short fast, and stimulates its sensory nerves; and loss of 

 appetite may be due to either of several causes. The sto- 

 mach may be apathetic and lack its normal sensibility, so 

 that the empty condition does not act, as it normally does, 

 as a sufficient excitant. When food is taken it is a further 

 stimulus and may be enough; in such cases "appetite 

 comes with eating." A bitter before a meal is useful as an 

 appetizer to patients of this sort. On the other hand, the 

 stomach may be too sensitive, and a voracious appetite be 

 felt before a meal, which is replaced by nausea, or even 

 vomiting, as soon as a few mouthfuls have been swallowed; 

 the extra stimulus of the food then over-stimulates the too 

 irritable stomach, just as a draught of mustard and warm 



