principles become more miscible with it. Nearly a pint of saliva is
furnished every twenty-four hours for the use of an adult. When the
food has been masticated and mixed with the saliva, it is then passed
into the stomach, where it is acted upon by a juice secreted by the
filaments of that organ, and poured into the stomach in large quantities
whenever food comes in contact with its mucous coats. It consists of a
dilute acid known to the chemists as hydrochloric acid, composed of
hydrogen and chlorine, united together in certain definite proportions.
The gastric juice contains, also, a peculiar organic-ferment or
decomposing substance, containing nitrogen--something of the nature of
yeast--termed _pepsine_, which is easily soluble in the acid just named.
That gastric juice acts as a simple chemical solvent, is proved by the
fact that, after death, it has been known to dissolve the stomach
itself."


ALCOHOL RETARDS DIGESTION.

"It is an error to suppose that, after a good dinner, a glass of spirits
or beer assists digestion; or that any liquor containing alcohol--even
bitter beer--can in any way assist digestion. Mix some bread and meat
with gastric juice; place them in a phial, and keep that phial in a
sand-bath at the slow heat of 98 degrees, occasionally shaking briskly
the contents to imitate the motion of the stomach; you will find, after
six or eight hours, the whole contents blended into one pultaceous mass.
If to another phial of food and gastric juice, treated in the same way,
I add a glass of pale ale or a quantity of alcohol, at the end of seven
or eight hours, or even some days, the food is scarcely acted upon at
all. This is a fact; and if you are led to ask why, I answer, because
alcohol has the peculiar power of chemically affecting or decomposing