next questions are: "What do these elements of food perform when in the child's body? What becomes of these substances after they have been eaten by the child? How are they changed during the time of their stay in the body? And in what condition do they leave the child's body, and how do they force him to desire food again?"
These questions properly belong to the chapter on "Nutrition," where they will be answered in their turn. Afterwards, we must be permitted to turn our attention to a further question, viz., "What articles of food are the most advantageous to man from the time he is weaned or the time, he takes from among vegetable and animal matter the same substances for food, that are contained in the mother's milk?"
In order to arrive at the answers to all these questions, we were obliged to first prepare the ground a little. This was a gain on our part, for now we shall attain the end in a shorter time than would have been possible otherwise. We trust that we may give our reader a correct idea of the subject, if he will but come to our aid with his most earnest attention and reflection; these are needed here the more, as we have to treat a difficult subject in a very short space.
CHAPTER V.
WHAT BECOMES OF THE MOTHER'S MILK AFTER IT HAS ENTERED THE BODY OF THE CHILD?
When the child has freed itself from the body of its mother, it consists of blood, flesh, and bones, which heretofore were formed and nourished by the blood of the mother.
As soon, however, as the child is born, it ceases to be nourished in this manner. It ceases, also, to secrete through its mother, substances which are useless to it. The child now begins to breathe for itself, and by its breath secretes carbon in the form of carbonic acid. Its skin begins to perspire, and secretes chiefly hydrogen and oxygen in the shape of water or vapor; by the urine, finally, it secretes nitrogen. These substances – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen – before their secretion, constituted vital parts of the child's body; now, however, they are wasted, and for this reason must be thrown off.
It is evident that the child wants compensation for this loss. This is given by the mother's milk; for it contains chiefly these same substances.
But how is this effected?
The milk passes from the child's mouth through the gullet into the stomach. While yet in the mouth, the milk is mixed with a certain liquid called saliva. This saliva possesses the quality of preparing the milk for the necessary change which will take place, when it reaches the child's stomach. The principal work, however, is carried on in the stomach itself. Its sides secrete a liquid called "gastric juice," whose business it is, to transform into a pulp milk, and also solid food, provided the latter be well masticated and moistened.
Science has taught us to prepare gastric juice artificially. The process of digestion, that is, the transformation of solid food – the crust of bread, meat, etc. – into a pulp, may nowadays be observed in a glass filled with warm, artificial, gastric juice.
After the digestion is completed, the lower opening of the stomach, which leads into the duodenum, and which, during the process of digestion, was closed by a muscle, opens itself. The pulp, now called "chyme," flows into the continuation of the stomach – the "alimentary canal" or "duodenum." This is but a long bag with many folds and windings.
The chyme is here mixed again with a liquid called "intestinal juice;" it has the quality of continuing digestion until the chyme separates into two parts; one of them, a milky fluid called "chyle," contains the substance which feeds the body. The other is the solid parts not adapted to nutrition; they are thrown out by the lower opening of the "rectum."
But how is this nutritive part, the chyle, conveyed into the various parts of the body?
The intestinal canal is filled with extremely small vessels called "lacteal absorbents." These vessels absorb the chyle. This absorption, on account of the great length of the intestinal canal – in adults it is nearly thirty feet long – is, in a healthy body, accomplished very thoroughly. The real nutriment for the body is now contained in the lacteal absorbents, an infinite number of small tubes.
All these small vessels, however, converge towards the lower part of the spinal column, and uniting, form a vessel which ascends into the chest; here it empties into a large blood-vessel, the blood of which is on its way to the heart. Thrown out of the heart in another direction, the blood is pushed through the whole body.
Thus the food, after having been transformed into a juice very similar to the blood, joins the blood after a circuitous journey, and is finally mixed with, or, more properly, changed into, blood.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW THE BLOOD BECOMES THE VITAL PART OF THE BODY
One would be well justified in calling the blood "man's body in a liquid state." For the blood is destined to become the living solid body of man.
People were astonished, when Liebig, the great naturalist, called blood the "liquid flesh;" we are correct even in going further and calling the blood "man's body in a liquid state." From blood are prepared not only muscles and flesh, but also bones, brain, fat, teeth, eyes, veins, cartilages, nerves, tendons, and even hair.
It is utterly wrong for anybody to suppose, that the constituents of all these parts are dissolved in the blood, say as sugar is dissolved in water. By no means. Water is something quite different from the sugar dissolved in it; while the blood is itself the material from which all the solid parts of the body are formed.
The blood is received into the heart, and the heart, like a pump, forces it into the lungs. There it absorbs in a remarkable manner the oxygen of the air which comes into the lungs by breathing. This blood, saturated now with oxygen, is then recalled to another part of the heart by an expansive movement of that organ.
This part of the heart contracts again and impels the oxygenated blood into the whole body by means of arteries, which branch out more and more, and become smaller and smaller, until at last they are no longer visible to the naked eye. In this manner the blood penetrates all parts of the body, and returns to the heart by means of similar thread-like veins, which gradually join and form larger veins. Having reached the heart, it is again forced into the lungs, and absorbs there more oxygen, returns to the heart, and is again circulated through the whole system.
During this double circulation of the blood from the heart to the lungs and back, and then from the heart to all parts of the body and back again – during all this, the change of particles, so remarkable in itself, is constantly going on: the exchange by which the useless and wasted matter are secreted and new substances distributed. This fact is wonderful, and its cause not yet fully explained by science; but so much is certain, that the blood when being conveyed to all parts of the human body, deposits whatever at the time may be needed there for the renewal of that part.
Thus the blood that has been formed in the child from the mother's milk, contains phosphorus, oxygen, and calcium. These substances, during the circulation of the blood, are deposited in the bones, and form "phosphate of lime," the principal element in the bone. In the same manner fluor and calcium are given to the teeth. The muscles, or flesh, also receive their ingredients from the blood; so do the nerves, veins, membranes, brain, and nails; also the inner organs, such as the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, and stomach.
They all, however, in return give to the blood their waste particles, which it carries to that part of the human body where they may be secreted.
If any member of the body is so bound, that the blood cannot circulate, it must decay; for the life of the body consists in its constant change and transformation, in the continual exchange of fresh substances for waste ones. But this vital exchange is only kept
