The human machine, its care and repair; or, How to develop the body, preserve the health, meet emergencies, nurse the sick, and treat disease; . canal is the great duct by which the foods areconveyed through the body and their useless parts evacuated, andconsists of the esophagus or gullet, the stomach, and the small andlarge intestines. The stomach is the most dilated of these fourparts, and besides serving as a reservoir for food, is the principalorgan of digestion—the mill which completes the wrork begun bythe teeth. The esophagus opens into it near its larger orcardiac end, and the duodenu
The human machine, its care and repair; or, How to develop the body, preserve the health, meet emergencies, nurse the sick, and treat disease; . canal is the great duct by which the foods areconveyed through the body and their useless parts evacuated, andconsists of the esophagus or gullet, the stomach, and the small andlarge intestines. The stomach is the most dilated of these fourparts, and besides serving as a reservoir for food, is the principalorgan of digestion—the mill which completes the wrork begun bythe teeth. The esophagus opens into it near its larger orcardiac end, and the duodenum—the upper portion of the small intestine—beginsat its smaller or pyloricend. It is composed offour coats or mem-branes—the external orperitoneal, the muscu-lar, the sub-mucous andthe mucous, and be-tween them are distrib-uted the blood vessels,lymphatics and is now known to haveno villi like those of theintestine for absorbingnutrients. The size of thestomach varies in differ-ent persons, and in thesame person at differenttimes according to thedegree of its distention,lative size of the stomach. but when moderately 235. 236 GENERAL DISEASES. filled its average length is about twelve inches and its verticaldiameter about four inches. It has two movements: A kind ofrotary or churning movement whereby the food is mixed withthe gastric juice and triturated or broken up into very fine parts,and a peristaltic movement which, as fast as the food is dissolvedor reduced to a semi-fluid state called chyme, presses it alongand out through the pylorus. Digestion is the process of dissolving food until, in fluid form,it can pass through the membranes of the digestive canal into theblood. This is accomplished by means of mechanical and chemi-cal processes. The mechanical parts are mastication and themuscular action of the stomach whereby it grinds or disintegratesthe food. The chemical part is performed by the aid of ferment is a substance which works changes i
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