kind of food that nourishes the animal, and by means of which he
renews himself every moment of his life. Nor is digestion less
necessary to prepare sensible aliments towards their being changed
into blood, which is a liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to
thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all
the members what they lose continually both by transpiration and the
waste of spirits. The lungs are like great covers, which being
spongy, easily dilate and contract themselves, and as they
incessantly take in and blow out a great deal of air, they form a
kind of bellows that are in perpetual motion. The stomach has a
dissolvent that causes hunger, and puts man in mind of his want of
food. That dissolvent, which stimulates and pricks the stomach,
does, by that very uneasiness, prepare for it a very lively
pleasure, when its craving is satisfied by the aliments. Then man,
with delight, fills his belly with strange matter, which would
create horror in him if he could see it as soon as it has entered
his stomach, and which even displeases him, when he sees it being
already satisfied. The stomach is made in the figure of a bagpipe.
There the aliments being dissolved by a quick coction, or digestion,
are all confounded, and make up a soft liquor, which afterwards
becomes a kind of milk, called chyle; and which being at last
brought into the heart, receives there, through the plenty of
spirits, the form, vivacity, and colour of blood. But while the
purest juice of the aliments passes from the stomach into the pipes
destined for the preparation of chyle and blood, the gross particles
of the same aliments are separated, just as bran is from flour by a
sieve; and they are dejected downwards to ease the body of them,
through the most hidden passages, and the most remote from the
organs of the senses, lest these be offended at them. Thus the
wonders of this machine are so great and numerous, that we find some