A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson (readnow TXT) π
CHAPTER II
WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH
WHAT KEEPS US ALIVE
The Energy in Food and Fuel. The first question that arises in our mind on looking at an engine or machine of any sort is, What makes it go? If we can succeed in getting an answer to the question, What makes the human automobile go? we shall have the key to half its secrets at once. It is fuel, of course; but what kind of fuel? How does the body take it in, how does it burn it, and how does it use the energy or power stored up in it to run the body-engine?
Man is a bread-and-butter-motor. The fuel of the automobile is gasoline, and the fuel of the man-motor we call food. The two kinds of fuel do not taste or smell much alike; but they are alike in that they both have what we call energy, or power, stored up
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The term salts includes, as will be explained later, a large number of substances, like ordinary table salt, baking soda, and the laxative salts.
There are three pairs of these: one just below the ears and behind the angles of the jaw, known as the parotid; one under the middle of the lower jaw known as the submaxillary; and a small pair just under the tip of the tongue, called the sublingual. These glands have grown up from the very simplest of beginnings. At first there was just a little pocketing or pouching down of the mucous lining, like the finger of a glove; then a couple of smaller hollow fingers budded off from the bottom of the first finger; then four smaller fingers from the bottom of these; and so on, until a regular little hollow tree or shrub of these tiny tubes was built up, all discharging through the original hollow stem, which has now become what we call the duct of the gland. Every secreting gland in the bodyβthe stomach (or peptic) glands, the salivary glands, the liver, the pancreasβis built up upon this simple plan. The saliva and the juice of the pancreas and that of the liver (bile) are alkaline, as are also the blood and most juices of the body. The stomach juice is acid, as also are the urine and the perspiration.
It is wonderfully elastic and constantly changing in size, contracting till it will scarcely hold a quart when empty, and expanding, as food or drink is put into it, until it will easily hold two quarts, or even a gallon or more when greatly distended, as by gas.
If you take some pepsin which has been extracted from the stomach of a pig or a calf, melt it in water in a glass tube, then drop one or two little pieces of meat or hard-boiled white of egg into it, you can see them slowly melt away like sugar in a cup of coffee. If you add a few drops of hydrochloric acid, the melting will go on much faster; and if you warm up the tube to about the heat of the body, it will proceed faster still. So nature knew just what she was doing when she provided pepsin and acid and warmth in the stomach.
The liver and the bile are more fully described in chapter XVII.
Tiny plant cells, known also as germs, which cause fermentation, decay, and many diseases.
On this account, they are often spoken of as carbohydrates, or "carbon-water stuffs."
See page 11.
Pemmican is a sort of "canned beef" made originally out of the best parts of venison and buffalo-meat. This is boiled, and packed into skin bags; then melted fat is poured in, so as to fill up all the chinks and form a thick layer over the surface. It
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