Lectures on Digestion, Tr. by R. Saundby - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880. Excerpt: ... compounds which, in part directly as vegetables, in part as mediate derivatives of them, serve partly as nutriment, partly as gratification, partly as medicine. They all, as well as the inorganic salts, come under observation only so far as they are soluble, or are decomposed into soluble compounds, or can form such. Their absorption occurs chiefly in the upper part of the intestinal tract, and they are of no further interest to us in the study of digestion. There arises another trivial, but still important question in practice, How often and at what times should we take food? Between the extremes of the carnivora, which feed once in twenty-four hours or even longer, and the herbivora, which never have done with the business of feeding, man holds a middle place, but not without permitting the recognition in the course of his life of a sort of transition from the herbivore to the carnivore. Infants should have the breast during the first three weeks as often as they wake; after that, every two hours to the third month; then, up to the dentition, every three hours; and later there should be five meals in the twenty-four hours. The last is also true for adults, provided that the principal and secondary meals alternate regularly. Still the intervals between different meals are often too long, between others too short. It is so partially with us, but especially in England and America, where the custom is to eat a large breakfast and then to go till evening without eating hardly anything, and at six o'clock to take another meal, naturally then in abnormal quantity. This not only causes inactivity of body and mind, which always accompanies the digestion of large meals, but is the cause of numerous disorders of the digestive system, especially the stomach. Chroni...