130 



ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 



cially those about the mouth of the Orange river in Africa, carry this sort of 

 luxury to a much higher pitch, for they have no objection to an offensive 

 smell, and appear to value their food in proportion to its approach towards 

 putrefaction. Now all these foods, whatever be the degree of their putridity, 

 are equally restored to a state of sweetness by the action of this juice, a 

 short time after they have been introduced into the stomach. 



Dr. Fordyce made a variety of experiments in reference to this subject 

 upon the dog, and found uniformly that the most putrid meat he could be 

 made to swallow, was in a very short time deprived of its putrescency. We 

 cannot, therefore, be surprised that crows, vultures, and hyenas, who find a 

 pleasure in tainted flesh, should fatten upon so impure a diet; nor that the 

 dunghill should have its courtiers among insects as well as the flower- 

 garden. 



The gastric juice has hence been employed as an antiseptic in a variety of 

 cases out of the body. 



Spallanzani has ascertained that the gastric juice of the crow and the dog 

 will preserve veal and mutton perfectly sweet, and without consumption, 

 thirty-seven days in winter ; while the same meats immersed in water emit 

 a fetid smell as early as the seventh day, and by the thirtieth are resolved 

 into a state of most offensive liquidity. 



Physicians and surgeons have equally availed themselves of this corrective 

 quality, and have occasionally employed the gastric juice, internally in cases 

 of indigestion from a debilitated stomach, and externally as a check to gan- 

 grenes, and a stimulus to impotent and indolent ulcers. I do not know that 

 this practice has hitherto taken place very largely in our own country, but it 

 has been extensively resorted to on the Continent, and especially in Switzer- 

 land and Italy ; and in many cases with great success. 



But the gastric juice is as remarkable for its solvent as for its antiputres- 

 cent property. Of this any industrious observer may satisfy himself by at- 

 tending to the process of digestion in many of our most common animals ; but 

 it has been most strikingly exemplified in the experiments of Reaumur and 

 Spallanzani. Pieces of the toughest meats, and of the most solid bones, en- 

 closed in small perforated tin cases to guard against all muscular action, have 

 been repeatedly thrust into the stomach of a buzzard : the meats were uni- 

 formly found diminished to three-fourths of their bulk in the space of twenty- 

 four hours, and reduced to slender threads ; and the bones were wholly di- 

 gested, either upon the first trial or a few repetitions of it. Dr. Stevens repeated 

 the experiment on the human stomach by means of a perforated ivory ball, 

 which he hired a person at Edinburgh alternately to swallow and disgorge, 

 when a like effect was observed. 



The gastric juice of the dog dissolves ivory itself and the enamel of the 

 teeth ; that of the hen has dissolved an onyx and diminished a louis-d'or ;* 

 even among insects we find some tribes that fatten upon the fibrous parts of 

 the roots of trees, and others upon metallic oxides. And it is not long since 

 that, upon examining the stomach and intestinal tube of a man who died in one 

 of the public hospitals of this metropolis, and who had some years before 

 swallowed a number of clasp-knives out of hardihood, their handles were 

 found digested, and their blades blunted, though he had not been able to dis- 

 charge them from his body. 



It is in consequence of this wonderful power that the stomach is sometimes 

 found in the extraordinary condition of digesting itself ; and of exhibiting, 

 when examined on dissection, various erosions in different parts of it, and 

 especially towards the upper half, into which the gastric juice is supposed to 

 flow most freely. It is the opinion of Mr. John Hunter,t however, whose 

 opinions are always entitled to respect, that such a fact can never take place 

 except in cases of sudden death, when the stomach is in full health, and the 

 gastric juice, now just poured forth, is surrounded by a dead organ. For he 

 plausibly argues, that the moment the stomach begins to be diseased, it 



• Swammerdam, Biblia Naturae, p. 168. 



t Phil. Trans, 1772. 



