Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge].

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    out of it without having first disintegrated it completely ; and one of the great requirements of the stomach is to have something solid to act upon. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that this organ is either to he humoured with only soft, well-masticated, or triturated diet, or to have heavy lumps and masses always thrown into it, the happy medium is the best. The fibre of meat and soft solids gives it some work to do, and we know from the fact of cases from injuries or wounds, external openings have been formed, and pieces of meat put directly into it; digestion takes place of such matters within a given time, but not so perfectly as when it has had the benefit of the salivary process. The mass of food when digested is called., Chyme, which is a thick creamy substance having more an acid than an alkaline quality. In this there are many oily and fatty substances which the stomach acids cannot convert, but which are more or less changed by the alkali of the saliva. As fast as the chyme is formed it escapes into the second stomach to be acted upon by certain alkaline sub¬ stances jointly, such as saliva from the sweetbread, and bile from the liver. These unite together in one tube, and, as a single stream, are discharged into the second stomach. Whatever surplus or stomach acid, therefore, may be con¬ tained in the chyme is quickly neutralized, whilst all fatty and oily matters are converted into a soapy consistence. This mass, then, no longer retains its first stomach character but takes the new name of Chyle, and is the last result of the digestive process. It now escapes into the small intestines or the appropriating organs, where it is well mixed with the fluid elements of the mucous mem¬ branes of this long and tortuous passage. Many pounds of this inorganic fluid being calculated to be used therein in every twenty-four hours. The nourishing particles are absorbed into certain vessels, which always begin small and enlarge as they get filled. It was formerly supposed that the absorbent vessels had open mouths, so that it is re¬ corded in our text books that the “ open mouths of the absorbents took up this nourishment.” This, however, is a fiction. Absorption of this valuable new matter for the regenerative processes is done by what is called osmose, that is, the fluids are actually strained through the mem-