DR. PHILIP ON DIGESTION. 
139 
because it is only in a living stomach that galvanism can have such an effect ; 
but this effect hears too strong an analogy to other chemical results to be 
wholly separated from them, although what we call life, whatever that may be, 
is necessary to its production. 
The same effect, and one certainly of a very complicated nature, is here 
produced by the nervous power and a chemical agent ; because when the latter 
is substituted for the former, the same effect takes place. It is a simple matter 
of fact. But it is maintained by some gentlemen that the same effect may be 
produced by a mechanical agent*. They have related several experiments 
which appeared to them to prove, that when after a part of the eighth pair of 
nerves is removed, and thus the due secretion of gastric juice prevented, it may 
be restored by mechanically irritating the cut ends of the lower portions of 
the divided nerves. If such be the fact, it must materially influence our views 
both with respect to the function of digestion and the other secreting processes 
of the animal body. 
In judging of the result of such experiments, several things must be taken 
into the account which appear to have escaped the attention of those gen- 
tlemen. 
At the time the animal is fed, in preparation for the experiment, there may 
be some food in the stomach, from previous meals, more or less digested, and 
there is always some gastric juice ready to act on any new food which may be 
presented to it. It is evident therefore, that although the secretion of gastric 
juice ceases at the moment of the excision of part of the eighth pair of nerves, 
some digested food must be found in the stomach for some hours after the 
operation ; for, as I have ascertained by numerous trials, many hours are re- 
quired in such experiments for the stomach to propel into the intestine the 
remains of food previously digested, or that digested by the gastric juice pre- 
viously formed. 
When therefore the contents of the stomach are examined in five or six 
hours, and generally even in ten or twelve, after the operation, more or less 
digested food is found lying next the surface of the stomach. But when the 
* See a paper entitled, Memoire sur le mode d’action des nerfs pneumogastriques dans la pro- 
duction des phenomenes de la digestion. Par MM. Breschet et Milne Edwards (lu a la Societe 
Philomatique, le 19 Fevrier 1825). — (Extract des Archives generales de Medecine.) 
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