An essay on indigestion, or, Morbid sensibility of the stomach & bowels, as the proximate cause or characteristic condition of dyspepsy ... / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on indigestion, or, Morbid sensibility of the stomach & bowels, as the proximate cause or characteristic condition of dyspepsy ... / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    From numerous facts, indeed, which have come within my own ob- servation, I am convinced that many strange antipathies, disgusts, caprices of temper, and eccentricities, which are considered solely as obliquities of the intellect, have their source in corporeal disorder. I could relate some curious illustrations, were I not prevented by regard to the personal feelings of others. Before entering on the subject of Indigestion, as it is commonly called, it may be proper to take a consise view of perfect digestion— since it is only by comparison that we can distinguish disordered from healthy function of an organ. SECT. II.—DIGESTION. This process, taken in its most general and most proper sense, may be defined, “ the conversion of dead into living matter.” At all events, it is the conversion of dead animal and vegetable substances into an animalized fluid qualified to enter into the current of the circu- lation, and there become part and parcel of the living machine. No other fluid, not even milk from the living udder, can be poured into the bloodvessels, without risk of life, and, therefore, we are authorised to conclude, that the chyle is a vitalized fluid like the blood itself. If this be a correct representation, and I believe it is, all inquiry as to how the change is effected, will be just as successful as the inquiry how man was changed from lifeless clay into a living animal at his first creation. But the prying eye of the physiologist has penetrated into some of Nature’s secret operations, and there are several curious phenomena attendant on the process of digestion, which may be glanced at in this place. The food is, or ought to be, well masticated by the teeth, and is then propelled into the stomach, incorporated with a quantity of saliva. In the stomach this mass is applied to the internal surface of the organ, and, layer after layer, is there converted into chyme by the gastric secretion, or some vital power of which we are ignorant, and moved forward to the pyloric orifice, through which it is gradually propelled into the duodenum or second stomach. The muscular power of the stomach is, of course, the agent in moving forward the layers of digested matter; and thus, in succession, the whole mass which des- cended from the mouth is converted into a bland, whitish, cream-like substance, and finally expelled through the pylorus. The length of