Stomach

“ The whole nutritive apparatus is moved. The stomach becomes sensible, the gastric juices are moved and displace themselves with noise, the mouth becomes moist, and all the digestive powers are under arms, like soldiers awaiting the word of command. After a few moments there will be spasmodic motion, pain and hunger. ”

“ By loading the stomach, digestion is impeded; for the natural juice of the stomach, which is the great medium of digestion, has not then room to exert itself. The stomach therefore nauseates its contents, and is troubled with eructations; the spirits are oppressed, obstructions ensue, and disease is the consequence. Besides, when thus overfilled, the stomach presses on the diaphragm, prevents the proper play of the lungs, and occasions difficulty and uneasiness in breathing. ”

“ After an hour or two the stomach squeezes the food so hard that a little of it, which has been digested by the gastric juice and the saliva, escapes through the lower opening, the pylorus, of which we have already learned. As the action of the stomach continues, more of the digested food escapes, until all that has been properly acted upon has passed out. ”

“ The stomach consists of a white membrane, thin, like opaline, and presenting itself in longitudinal folds; the liver is granulous, composed of greenish grains more or less deep, contained in the meshes of a whitish tissue forming a thickish bed, which surrounds the stomach, the intestines taking the direction of the median and dorsal line, and beneath the heart are received and terminate in a small appendage, floating in the cavity of the mantle near the hinge. ”

“ HOW AUTO-INFECTION AFFECTS THE GASTRIC DIGESTION, AND VICE VERSA.
Frederick the Great said that all culture comes through the stomach. This saying emphasizes pithily the dependence of psychology upon physiology. The stomach with the intestines is certainly the source from which every portion of the body receives its nourishment and most of its diseases. The physiological plus and minus processes leave their reflex on the mind. ”

“ Several condiments act upon the stomach, or on the intestine, after having first produced an agreeable sensation of taste. The excitation to which they give rise does not extend to the central organ, there to produce the same sensation. They are limited to the stomach and to the intestine, and serve to favor digestion and absorption. The gastric juice, we know, is not secreted continually, but only when there is something in the stomach. ”

“ The stomach has a soft, spongy appearance, and, when not distended, lies in folds. During life, it is ordinarily of a pinkish color. It is provided with numerous small glands, which secrete the gastric fluid necessary for the digestion of food. The lining membrane, when divested of mucus, has a wrinkled appearance. The arteries, veins, and lymphatics, of the stomach are numerous. ”

“ It may be said that the stomach is a single organ, and therefore incapable of performing more than one function. As well might it be asserted that it was a steam-engine, with a single furnace consuming Whitehaven, Scotch, or Newcastle coals indiscriminately. The fact is, the stomach is not a single organ, but in reality a congeries of organs, each receiving its own proper kind of aliment, and developing itself by outward bumps and prominences, which indicate with amazing accuracy the existence of the particular faculty to which it has been assigned. ”

“ How very powerful a human stomach may sometimes be, and how large a task in the way of digestion it may sometimes perform without complaint, is known to those who have had the opportunity of observing what certain persons with exceptional power are accustomed to take as food, and do take for a long time apparently with impunity. But these are stomachs endowed with extraordinary energy, and woe be to the individual with a digestive apparatus of moderate power who attempts to emulate the performance of a neighbor at table who perchance may be furnished with such an effective digestive apparatus! ”

“ We shall only add, that the motions of the muscular fibres of the stomach are associated with those of the heart and arteries by direct sympathy, as appears by the weakness of the pulse during the exhibition of an emetic; and that the absorbents of the stomach are associated with the cellular and cutaneous absorbents by reverse sympathy, as is shewn by the great absorption of the mucus of the cells in anasarca during sickness; at the same time that the absorbents of the stomach invert their actions, and pour the mucus and water thus absorbed into that viscus. ”

“ Our forefathers considered the stomach the all-important organ of digestion and the intestines as scarcely more than a long tube to facilitate absorption and deal properly with waste materials. Their relative values are now exactly reversed in our estimation. The stomach has come to be looked upon as scarcely more than a thin-walled bag meant to hold the food that we take at each meal and then pass it on by degrees to be digested, prepared for absorption and finally absorbed in the intestines. ”

“ Factors Influencing Gastric Digestion.—The factors influencing digestion in the stomach constitute all those mechanical, electrical, chemical, and psychical factors which stimulate or retard the action of the gastric juices. The movements in the stomach are involuntary, but their activities may be stimulated by the flow of gastric juice. Sleep retards digestion in the stomach by retarding the movements in the organ itself. ”

“ In all animals, when the appetite is very intense, the stomach rises up, so that some people who have a clear perception of this condition say that their stomach “creeps out” of them; in others, who are still masticating their food and have not yet worked it up properly in the mouth, the stomach obviously snatches away the food from them against their will. ”

“ If too large a quantity of food is given at each meal, or the meals are too frequently repeated, in both instances the stomach will become oppressed, wearied, and deranged; part of the food, perhaps, thrown up by vomiting, whilst the remainder, not having undergone the digestive process, will pass on into the bowels, irritate its delicate lining membrane, and produce flatulence, with griping, purging, and perhaps convulsions. ”

“ When the stomach and intestines receive a quantity of food, whose stimulus is greater than usual, all their motions, and those of the glands and lymphatics, are stimulated into stronger action than usual, and perform their offices with greater vigour and in less time: such are the effects of certain quantities of spice or of vinous spirit. ”

“ Most assuredly the intestines have the advantage of the stomach in none of these respects. For what possible reason, then, will objectors have it that bread may often remain a whole night in the stomach and still preserve its original qualities, whereas when once it is projected into the intestines, it straightway becomes ordure? ”

“ Despite all this the stomach is one of the best-equipped mechanisms in the world. It, at least, is not modern. After their age-long development the organs of the body are remarkably standardized and adapted to the work required of them. It is safe to say that ninety per cent. of all so-called "stomach trouble" is due not to any inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding between the stomach and its owner. ”

“ The stomach, having less labour imposed upon it, will require less blood and less nervous energy, and consequently less of both will be abstracted from the other organs which are also in activity, and requiring their assistance. Travellers, literati, and other actively engaged men, know this rule by experience, and some of them have specially noticed its importance. ”

“ The nearest approach, in the adult form, to special organs are the digestive cavity, and the cnidæ. The stomach, however, possesses no true parietal walls, and in one form—the fresh-water hydra—the stomach will do duty for the skin, and the skin for the stomach, if necessary; they seem to be able to live very comfortably, and digest their food without difficulty when turned wrong-side outward. ”

“ Liquids are rapidly removed from the stomach by absorption. Hence, in cases of great prostration, when it is desirable to introduce nutriment into the system, without delay, the animal and vegetable broths are a desirable and convenient form of supplying aliment.
323. The condition of the skin exercises an important influence on the digestive apparatus. Let free perspiration be checked, either from uncleanliness or from chills, and it will diminish the functional action of the stomach and its associated organs. ”

“ If the stomach will only pass the food on properly, the intestines will do the rest. A number of people have been found in the course of routine stomach examinations who proved to have no secretory function of the stomach and yet suffered no symptoms at all attributable to this fact. ”

“ But when the stomach is excited by food which it cannot dissolve, and when the owner of the stomach, disregarding its remonstrances, will persist in over-eating, or in eating things that disagree with the system, then the liver and the stomach sympathise, and the muscular threads, or hands, that prevail all through the alimentary organs, instead of moving onward, move backward, and throw some bile into the stomach to assist to dissolve and remove the excessive or improper food. ”

“ I must first tell you, however, that the diaphragm keeps up intimate relations with his neighbor below—the stomach. Every time he rises in the breast the stomach rises behind him; and not only the stomach, but also its companions, the intestines. All the officials employed in the business of digestion travel regularly with him; coming down as well as going up in company. Put your hand upon your abdomen and breathe strongly and you will feel the rebound of all the movements of the diaphragm. ”

“ In the stomach it causes a sensation of warmth which is diffused over the abdomen and quickly followed by a general glow of the body. In moderate quantity, it induces an increased blood-supply which enables the mucous follicles and gastric glands to produce a more abundant secretion of stomach juices. ”

“ Digestion is performed slowly in men of learning, therefore fresh aliments should seldom be given them; because the state of the stomach is very different when it is half full of undigested aliments, from what it is when entirely void of aliments, and overflowed with the gastric fluids, ready for the use of concoction. ”