O^i THii DIGESTIVE FUlNOiiUi^, ETC, 



135 



and the luxurious desire of having it softened and mellowed to our hands, 

 tempt us to keep several kinds as long as vi^e can endure the smell. The 

 wandering hordes of gipsies, however, and the inhabitants of various 

 savage countries, and especially 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 those 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. ^ 



Spalanzani has ascertained that the gastric juice of the crow and the 

 dog will preserve veal and mutton perfectly sweet, and without consump- 

 tion, 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 cor- 

 rective quaUty, and have occasionally employed the gastric juice, inter- 

 nally in cases of indigestion from a debilitated stomach, and externally as 

 a check to gangrenes, 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 Switzerland and Italy ; and in many cases with great 

 success. ^ 



But the gastric juice is as remarkable for its solvent, as for its antipu- 

 trescent property. Of this any industrious observer may satisfy himself 

 by attending 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 Spalanzani. Pieces of the toughest meats, and of the most 

 solid bones, enclosed in small perforated tin-cases to guard against all mus- 

 cular action, have been repeatedly thrust into the stomach of a buzzard : 

 the meats were uniformly 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 digested, either upon the first trial or a few repeti- 

 tions of it. Dr. Stevens repeated the experiment on the human stomach 

 by means of a perforated ivory ball, which he hired a person at Edin- 

 burgh alternately to swallow and disgorge, when a like effect was ob- 

 served. 



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

 teeth ; Jhat 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 oxydes. And it is not 

 long since, that, upon examining the stomach and intestinal tube of a man 



* Swammerdara, Biblia Naturea, p, Ifi?. 



