The History of a Mouthful of Bread by Jean Macé (great novels to read txt) 📕

in order to finish her dinner more quickly, shirks the use of her teeth, and sends food, half chewed, into her stomach, is like a man who, having two servants, the one strong and vigorous, the other feeble and delicate, allows the first to dawdle at his ease, and puts all the hard work on the other. He would be very unjust in so doing, would he not? And as injustice always meets with its reward, his work is sure to be badly done.

Now, the work in question consists in reducing what we eat into a sort of pulp or liquid paste, from which the blood extracts at last whatever it requires. But the teeth may bite and tear the materials as they please, they can make nothing of them but a powder, which would never turn into a pulp, if during their labors they were not assisted by an indispensable auxiliary. To make pap for infants what do we add to the bread after it is cut in little bits? Without being a very clever cook, you will know that it is water which is wanted. And thus, to assist us in making pap for the blood, Providence has furnished us with a number of small spongy organs within the mouth, which are always filled with water. These are called salivary glands . This water oozes out from them of itself, on the least movement of the jaw, which presses upon the sponges as it goes up and down. The name of this water, as I need scarcely tell you, is saliva .

When I call it water, it is not merely from its resemblance; saliva is really pure water with a little albumen added. Do not be afraid of that word-it is not so alarming as it appears to be. It means simply the substance you know as the white of egg . There is also a little soda in the water, which you know is one of the ingredients of which soap is made. And this explains why the saliva becomes frothy, when the cheeks and tongue set it in motion in the mouth while we are talking; just as the whites of egg, or soapy water, become frothy when whipped up or beaten in a basin.

But the albumen and the soda have not been added to the saliva, in our case, merely to make it frothy; that would have been of very little use. They give to the water a greater power to dissolve the food into paste, and thus to begin that series of transformations by which it gradually becomes the fine red blood which shows itself in little drops at the tip of your finger when you have been using your needle awkwardly.

When once minced up by the teeth and moistened by the saliva, the food is reduced to a state of pulp, and having nothing further to do in the mouth, is ready to pass forward. But getting out of the mouth on its journey downwards is not so simple an affair as getting into it by the
front door , as it did at first. Swallowing is in fact a complicated action, and not to be explained in half a dozen words, and I think we have already chatted enough for to-day. I only wish I may not have tired you out with these interminable teeth! But you may expect something quite new when I begin again.


LETTER VII.

THE THROAT.

You remember a certain door-keeper, or porter, of whom we have already spoken a good deal, who resides in the mouth-the sense of taste, I mean?

Well, it is a porter's business to sweep out the entrance to a house, and you may always recognize him in the courtyard by his broom.

And accordingly our porter too has a broom specially placed at his service, namely, the tongue; and an unrivalled broom it is-for it is self-acting, never wears out, and makes no dust-qualities we cannot succeed in obtaining in any brooms of our own manufacture.

When the time has come for the pounded mouthful (described in the last chapter) to travel forward (the teeth having properly prepared it), the broom begins its work; scouring all along the gums, twisting and turning right and left, backwards and forwards, up and down; picking up the least grains of the pulp which have been manufactured in the mouth; and as the heap increases, it makes itself into a shovel-another accomplishment one would scarcely have expected it to possess. What it gathers together thus, rolls by degrees on its surface into a ball, which at last finds itself fixed between the palate and the tongue in such a manner that it cannot escape; at which moment the tongue presses its tip against the upper front teeth, forms of itself an inclined plane, and-but stop! we are getting on too fast.

At the back of the mouth, (which is the antechamber, as we said before,) is a sort of lobby, separated from the mouth by a little fleshy tongue let , suspended to the palate, exactly like those tapestry curtains which are sometimes hung between two rooms, under which one is enabled to pass, by just lifting them up.

If this lobby led only from the mouth to the stomach, the act of swallowing would be the simplest thing in the world; the tongue would be raised, the pounded ball would glide on, would pass under the curtain, and then good-bye to it. Unfortunately, however, the architect of the house seems to have economized his construction-apparatus here. The lobby serves two purposes; it is the passage from the mouth to the stomach, as well as from the nose to the lungs.

The air we breathe has its two separate doors there-one opening towards the nose, the other towards the lungs; through neither of which is any sort of food allowed to pass. But, as you may imagine, the food itself knows nothing of such spiteful restraints, and it is a matter of perfect indifference to it through which of the doors it passes. Not unlike a good many children who, though they are reasonable creatures, will push their way into places where they have been forbidden to go; and who can expect a pulpy food-ball to be more reasonable than a child? It was necessary, therefore, so to arrange matters that there should be no choice on the subject; that when the food-ball got into the lobby it should find no door open but its own, namely, that which led to the stomach. And that is exactly what is done.

You have not, perhaps, remarked that in the act of swallowing, something rises and contracts itself at the same moment in your throat, producing a kind of internal convulsion which jerks whatever is inside. People do not think about it when they are eating, because it is an involuntary action, and their attention is otherwise engaged.

But try to swallow when there is nothing in your mouth, and you will perceive what I mean at once.

Now, imagine our lobby at the back of the throat as a small closet, with a doorway in its wall, half-way up, the doorway being closed by a curtain. In the ceiling is a hole, which leads to the nose; in the floor two large tubes open out; the front one leading to the lungs, the one behind, to the stomach.

Now swallow, and I will tell you what happens. The curtain rises up and clings to the ceiling, and thus the passage to the nose is stopped up. The lung-tube rises along the wall, and hides itself under the door, contracting itself, and making itself quite small, as if it wished to leave plenty of room for the mouthful of food which is about to pass over it; and, for still greater security, at the very moment it rises, it pushes against a small trap-door which shuts up its mouth. No other road remains, therefore, but through the tube which leads to the stomach; the pulpy mouthful drops straight therein, without risk of mistake, and when it is once there, everything readjusts itself as before.

These are very ingenious contrivances, and I will venture to say that if we would but study the wonders of the marvellous and varied machinery which is constantly at work in our behalf within us, we should be much better employed than in learning things from which no practical good can be derived. Moreover, we should be ashamed to trust, like the lower animals, only to our instinct, (which, after all, is much less developed in us than in them,) for blindly escaping the thousand chances of destruction that beset a structure so fragile and delicate in its contrivances as the human body. Besides, it is not only our own machinery that is entrusted to us, we are liable to be responsible for that of others, whose development it is our duty to guard and watch; and how can we do this with a safe conscience, if we are ignorant of the construction, the action, the laws of all sorts which the great Artificer has, so to speak, made use of in forming our bodies?

When you, in your turn, are a mother, you dear little rogue, who sit there opening wide your bright eyes, and not comprehending a word of what I am saying, you will be glad that you were taught when you were little, how your own little girl ought to be managed. You will find a hundred opportunities of making good use, in her behalf, of what you and I are learning together, and in the meantime there is no reason why you should not yourself profit by the knowledge you have gained.

I am quite sure, for instance, that in repeating to your child the simple rule of politeness, with which everybody is acquainted, " Never talk when you are eating ," you will be very careful to add, " and especially when you are swallowing ," for reasons I am about to detail.

When we want to speak we have to drive the air from the lungs into the mouth, and our words are sounds produced by this air as it passes through. This is the reason why I advise you to go on gently, and make the proper stops in reading aloud: to take breath , in fact, as it is called; otherwise, breath would all at once fail you, and you would be obliged to stop short in the middle of a sentence and wait like a simpleton till you had refilled the lungs with air by breathing. It was for this purpose, also, and not for mere economy's sake, as you may have thought, that the little cross-road of four doors has been placed at the back of the mouth, enabling it to communicate at pleasure with either the lungs or the stomach. It is a dangerous passage for food-parcels making their way to the stomach; but if you could substitute for it, as it may have occurred to you to do lately, a simple tube going directly to the stomach,-behold! you would find yourself dumb;-a serious misfortune, eh? for a little girl! But come, I am quizzing too much, so console yourself. I know many grown-up people who would be at least as sorry as yourself.

To return to our subject. We have said that, in order to guard against accidents, the lung-tube is closed at the moment we are about to swallow. But if by any unlucky chance the air is coming up from the lungs at the same moment, it must have a free passage. Its tube cannot help returning to its place; the little trap-door