SPALLANZANI 



31 



artificial digestion in vitro. He did not carry 

 these last investigations very far, and did not 

 obtain very decisive results ; nevertheless he must 

 be considered as the discoverer of artificial diges- 

 tion." 



After Reaumur, the Abbe Spallanzani (1783) 

 made similar observations on many other animals, 

 including carnivora. He showed that even in the 

 gallinaceae there was dissolution of food, not mere 

 trituration : and observed how after death the 

 gastric fluid may under certain conditions act on 

 the walls of the stomach itself. 



" Henceforth the experimental method had cut 

 the knot of the question raised by the theories of 

 Borelli and Valisnieri : digestion could no longer 

 be accounted anything but a dissolution of food 

 by the fluid of the stomach, the gastric juice. But 

 men had still to understand this gastric juice, 

 and to determine its nature and mode of action. 

 Nothing could be more contradictory than the 

 views on this matter. Chaussier and Dumas, of 

 Montpellier, regarded the gastric juice as of very 

 variable composition, one time alkaline, another 

 acid, according to the food ingested. Side by side 

 with these wholly theoretical opinions, certain 

 results of experiments had led to ideas just as 

 erroneous, for want of rigorous criticism of 

 methods ; it was thus that Montegre denied the 

 existence of the gastric juice as a special fluid ; 

 what men took for gastric juice, he said, was 

 nothing but the saliva turned acid in the stomach. 

 To prove his point, he made the following experi- 

 ment : — He masticated a bit of bread, then put it 



