237 
CHEMISTRY, METEOROLOGY, &C. 
the common salt in the blood; at least, chlorine is always pre¬ 
sent in the stomach during the act of the solution of the food, 
though the precise mode in which it operates is still unknown. 
Contemporaneously with the act of solution of the food, such 
essential changes take place in its composition as are requisite 
for perfecting the future chyle. 
The stomach having accomplished its office, the digested mass 
enters the duodenum, where the series of changes is continued 
in a manner equally wonderful. In this intestine or additional 
stomach the digested mass is brought into contact with the biliary^ 
and the pancreatic fluids. The alkali of the bile unites with the 
acid with which the food has been mingled during its digestion 
in the stomach ; the excrementitious parts, both of the food and 
of the bile, are separated or precipitated; while, at the same 
time, the proper chylous principles are eliminated in a condition 
appropriate for their absorption by the lacteals. 
There are two divisions of the minute tubes that compose what 
is termed the absorbent system of animals,—the lacteals, and the 
absorbents properly so called. The ultimate ramifications of the 
lacteals originate from the internal surface of the alimentary 
canal, where they take up the digested and partly assimilated 
aliment, or chyle. The ultimate ramifications of the proper ab¬ 
sorbents originate from all parts of the body, and are enabled to 
take up by some peculiar process every component of the body, 
solid as well as fluid, in the same manner as the chyle is taken up 
by the lacteals. The fluid obtained from the lacteals, and that 
obtained from the proper absorbents, are both alike albuminous. 
The albumen of the chyle, the author clearly shews, is produced 
in the stomach and duodenum w^hile the food is undergoing the 
process of digestion. But whence is the albumen derived that 
is found in the proper absorbents ? The animal body we know 
to be composed of a great variety of matters, among which gela¬ 
tine ])redominates. Now, since albumen only is found in the 
absorbents, it follows that, before the gelatine of the body is 
taken up by the absorbents, it is reconverted into albumen; in 
other words, the absorbed gelatine undergoes a process entirely 
analogous to that which gelatine and other matters undergo in 
the stomach and duodenum during the process of digestion. 
Hence the digestive process, instead of being confined to the 
stomach and duodenum, is actually carried on without intermis¬ 
sion in all parts of a living body. The two kinds of fluid 
albumen derived from these two sources, that is to say, the crude 
chyle in the lacteals, and the highly animalized lymph in the 
absorbents—are at length commingled, and form one uniform 
K k 
VOL. VIII. 
