DIGESTION. 79 



equally antiseptic, very resolvent k , and capable of again dis- 

 solving the milk which it has coagulated. 1 



" Digestion is performed principally by it. The food, when 

 properly chewed and subacted by the saliva, is dissolved" 1 by the 

 gastric fluid, and converted into the pultaceous chyme ; so that 

 most kinds of ingesta lose their specific qualities, are defended 

 from the usual chemical changes to which they are liable, such 

 as putridity, rancidity, &c., and acquire fresh properties prepara- 

 tory to chylification. n 



" This important function is probably assisted by various ac- 

 cessory circumstances. Among them, some particularly mention 

 the peristaltic motion, which, being constant and undulatory, agi- 

 tates and subdues the pultaceous mass of food. The existence 



k " Ed. Stevens, De Alimentorum Concoctione. Edinb. 1777. 8vo. 



Laz. Spallanzani, Dissertazioni di Fisica Animate e Vegetable. Modena. 

 1780. 8vo. vol. i." 



1 " Consult Veratti, Comment. Instituti JBononiens. torn, vi." 



Seven grains of the inner coat of a calf's stomach were found by Dr. Young 

 of Edinburgh to enable water poured upon it to coagulate 6857 times its weight 

 of milk. Thomson's System of Chemistry, vol. iv. p. 596. ed. 6., and Fordyce On 

 Digestion, p. 58. 



m " Even the stomach itself, when deprived of vitality, has been found acted 

 upon, and, as it were, digested, by it. See John Hunter, On the Digestion of the 

 Stomach after Death. Phil. Trans, vol. Ixii." This occurs particularly in the 

 splenic portion, and a complete opening is sometimes made, with pulpy ragged 

 edges, and the neighbouring organs with which the gastric juice comes in con- 

 tact may be also corroded. It happens chiefly to persons and brutes who 

 have been cut off in good health soon after taking food, and is observed also in 

 vegetable feeders and fish. Some have ignorantly doubted this, and confounded 

 it with softening from disease. Dr. Camerer of Stuttgard, in 1818, proved 

 the accuracy of J. Hunter's opinion, by observing this softening to occur with- 

 out putrefaction in brutes killed in good health, and putrefaction of the body 

 to occur without softening of the stomach ; and by ascertaining that the fluid, 

 taken from a stomach which it had softened, produced the same change 

 in another dead stomach to which it was transferred, but none upon another 

 during life, though it immediately softened this stomach when the animal was 

 killed, or both pneumogastric and trisplanchnic nerves were divided. This divi- 

 sion alone produced no such effect. See Andral, Precis d' Anatomic Pathologique, 

 t. ii. p. 86. sqq. A good paper, by Dr. Carswell, Professor of Morbid Anatomy 

 in the London University, will be found in the Journal Hebdomadaire, Nos. 87. 

 and 91., and the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ , 1830. 



" " Consult Ign. Doellinger, Grundriss der Naturkhre des menschlichen Orgn- 

 nismus, p. 88." 



" Consult Wepfer, Cicutee Aquatica; Historia el Noxee, in innumerable 

 places." 



G 2 



