The History of a Mouthful of Bread Part 5

The curtain is called the _Soft Palate_.

The lobby, the _Pharynx_.

The tube which leads to the stomach, the _Aesophagus_.

The tube leading to the lungs, the _Larynx_.

The opening of this tube is the _Glottis_, and the little trap-door which closes it when one swallows, is the _Epiglottis_.

You must excuse my attempting to explain the meanings of all these names; it would take me too long to do so. After all, the mere names are nothing. If I have succeeded in making you understand how all the different parts act, you may call them what you like.

Here we will rest. We are now on our way to where we shall see the large apartments, and be introduced to the master, that head of the house, whom no one can approach without so many ceremonies.

LETTER VIII.

THE STOMACH.

Once in the _oesophagus_ (you remember this is the name of the tube which leads to the stomach), the mouthful of food has nothing to do but to proceed on its way. All along this tube there is a succession of small elastic rings, [Footnote: Properly, _contractile circular fibres_.] which contract behind the food to force it forward, and widen before it to give it free pa.s.sage. They thus propel it forward, one after another, till it reaches the entrance to the stomach, into which the last ring pushes it, closing upon it at the same time.

Have you ever observed a worm or a leech in motion? You see a successive swelling up of the whole surface of its body, as the creature gradually pushes forward, just as if there was something in its inside rolling along from the tail to the head. Such is precisely the appearance which the _oesophagus_ would present to you, as the food pa.s.ses down it, if you had the opportunity of seeing it in action; and this has been called _the vermicular movement_, in consequence of its resemblance to the movement of a worm.

Here I wish to draw your attention to the very important fact, that this movement is in one respect of a quite different nature from that of your thumb when you take hold of a bit of bread, or that of your jaw when you bite with your teeth, or of your tongue, &c., when you swallow. All these actions belong to yourself, to a certain extent; they are voluntary, and under your own guidance; that is, you may perform them or not, as you choose. There is a constant connexion between you and them, and you knew what I meant at once as I named each of them in succession. But in speaking of this other movement we enter upon another world, of which you know nothing. Here is the black hole of which I spoke. The little rings of the _oesophagus_ perform their work by themselves, and you have no power in the matter. Not only do they move independently of you, but were you to take it into your head to stop them, it would be about as wise a proceeding as if you were to talk to them. We will speak hereafter, in another place, of these impertinent servants, who do not recognise your authority, and with whom we shall have constantly to do, throughout what remains to be said on the subject of eating. The truth is, your body is like a little kingdom, of which you have to be the queen, but queen of the frontiers only. The arms, the legs, the lips, the eyelids, all the exterior parts, are your very humble servants; at your slightest bidding they move or keep still: your will is their law. But in the interior you are quite unknown. There, there is a little republic to itself, ruling itself independently of your orders, which it would laugh at, if you attempted to issue them.

This republic, to make use of another metaphor, is the kitchen of the body. It is there they make blood, as they know how; putting it to all sorts of uses for your advantage, it is true, but without your consent.

You are in the position of the lady of a house whose servants have shut the door of the kitchen in her face that they may carry on their business after their own fashion, leaving only the housemaid and coachman at her command. It may be humiliating, perhaps, to be thus only partially mistress at home; but what can you do, my little demi-queen? I will tell you: make up your mind to govern the subjects under your orders as wisely as possible; and, as to the rest, be content with the only resource left you: viz., that of looking in at the window of the kitchen to see what goes on there!

The stomach is the head cook: the president of the internal republic.

He has charge of the stoves; the whole weight of affairs is on his hands, and he provides for the interests of all. Aesop taught us this, long ago, in his fable of "The Belly and Members." [Footnote: La Fontaine's translation is quoted in the French original, where the name of the fable is "_Messer Gaster_," a more correct t.i.tle than our own. _Gaster_ is a Greek word signifying stomach; and it is strictly _the stomach_ which is _meant_ in the fable. From this comes, too, the medical term _gastritis_, the name of a disease of the stomach.--TR.] It is a very good fable, and was wisely appealed to once by a Roman Consul to appease a disturbance in the State. But the application was not quite fair in one respect; and since I have started the subject, I will satisfy myself by explaining to you where it was wrong. The time will not be wasted, for this fable has furnished information to a great many people about the economy of their insides, and possibly to you; and I should like you to know the exact truth of all the particulars alluded to. Whether Aesop understood them all, I cannot pretend to say; but the application by the old Roman to the quarrel between the big-wig senators and the people was on one point decidedly unjust; for there was, as far as facts are concerned, something to be said on behalf of the stomach, which Consul Menenius seems not to have thought of.

When you come to this part of the Roman history you will learn that the Roman Senate was a large and fat stomach, which did, it is true, furnish good nourishment to the other members of the State, but kept the best share for itself. We may say this now without risk of offence, it having been dead for so long a time. Our stomach is the leanest, slightest, frailest part of our body. It is master in the sense in which it is said in the Gospel, "Let him that is first among you be the servant of the others." It receives everything, but it gives everything back, and keeps nothing, or almost nothing, for itself.

Between ourselves, Consul Menenius, the advocate of the Senate, had no business to talk to the poor wretches at Rome of any comparison between their government and so careful an administrator of the public good as a human stomach. He should have taken his subject of comparison from the families of geese or ducks--animals which have no teeth. These have strong, well-grown stomachs--true Roman senators--whose stoutness is in proportion to the work given them to do. But man provides his with work already prepared by chewing, supposing him to have had the sense to chew it, of course. It was not from a comparison with man, therefore, that Menenius ought to have got his boasted apologue, which was but a poor jest on the subject.

You did not expect, my dear, to come in for a lesson on Roman History in a discussion on the stomach. But the study of nature is connected with everything else, though without appearing to be so, and I was not sorry to give you, incidentally, this proof of the unexpected light which it throws, as we go along, upon a thousand questions which appear perfectly foreign to it. Look, for example, at this old fable cited by Menenius. For the two thousand years and upwards that it has been in circulation, troops of historians, poets, orators, and writers of all kinds, have pa.s.sed it forward from one to the other, without having troubled themselves to investigate the laws of nature in connection with the stomach; therefore, not one, that I am aware of, has observed this small error, so trifling in appearance, so important in reality, which nevertheless is obvious to the first young naturalist who thinks the matter over.

But enough of the Romans. Let us return to our master--the head cook, if you choose to call him so.

I was telling you just now that he managed the stoves, and you may have thought that I was merely using similes, as I am apt to do. But not so: it is quite true that he cooks; and so now tell me, if you can, whence he gets his fire to cook with, or rather, to speak more correctly, who gives it to him?

Now you are quite puzzled, so I must help you out.

In the mansion we were talking about some time ago, to whom would anyone who wanted to light a fire, apply for wood?

I think you can answer this yourself, for you cannot have forgotten our famous steward, who gives everything to everybody. But, you will wonder, I dare say, how the blood can carry wood in his pockets.

Wood? Ay, and real wood too, as we shall soon see: but it is not wood we are talking about now. The blood has something more to the purpose than wood in his pockets, for he has heat ready made. So when the stomach wishes to set to work, it appeals to the blood, which comes running from all parts of the body, and heats it so effectually that everything within is really and actually cooked. This is why one feels a sort of slight shudder down the back when the stomach has a great deal to do at once, for the blood being called for in a hurry, comes rushing along in great gushes, and carries with it the heat from the other parts of the body.

It is for this reason, too, that it is so dangerous to bathe when the stomach is at work cooking, because the cold of the water drives suddenly back all the blood which has acc.u.mulated around the little saucepan, and this causes such a shock in the body that people often die of it.

Do not ask me, to-day, where this heat of the blood comes from; we will speak of that hereafter. But I may tell you at once that our dear steward is not a bit cleverer in this matter than other people, and obtains his heat, like the humblest mortal, by burning his wood. Do not puzzle yourself to find out how. Enough that he burns it as we do, and by a similar process.

Well, in one way or another, the master cook has his fire at command.

You know also, already, what it is he has to get cooked; namely, the pulpy stew, which has begun in the mouth by chewing, and which it is his business now to finish perfectly. Now see what a cook does who has got her stew over the fire. She turns and turns it again and again, and shakes the saucepan from time to time, that the ingredients may be more thoroughly mixed up together; and this is precisely what is done by the stomach; for all the time that the cooking is going on, he swells and contracts himself alternately, after the fashion of those rings of the _oesophagus_ we were talking about, tossing and tumbling the food from one side to another, so as to knead it, as it were.

Again, the cook adds water to her stew from time to time to keep it moist; and so the stomach pours constantly upon his stew a liquid, which contains a great deal of water, and which flows in from a quant.i.ty of little holes, sunk in his delicate coats.

What more?

The cook puts in a little salt: and this the stomach takes care not to forget either, for he is a cook who understands his business. In the liquid of which I am speaking, there is, if not exactly salt as one sees it at table, at all events the most active part of salt, that which possesses in the highest degree the property of reducing everything we eat to a paste; and this is the real reason why we find all food so insipid which has not been seasoned with salt. As salt contains a principle essential to the work to be done by the stomach, some method had to be devised to induce us to provide him with it, and this method the porter up above has. .h.i.t upon. He makes a face if we offer him anything without a little salt on it, as much as to say--"How can you expect them to cook you properly down below, my good friend, if you don't bring them proper materials?"

Upon which hint men have always acted from the beginning; and as far as we can trace history back, we find them mixing salt with their food, though without knowing the real reason why. It is the same, too, with the lower animals. They know nothing of the matter either, but this does not prevent their having a natural relish for salt, as any one will tell you who has the charge of cattle; for their stomachs require for their cooking the very same seasoning as our own, and therefore their porter above has received the same orders.

Salt is not the only thing, however, that exists in that liquid in the stomach. Learned men, after making minute researches, have found in it another equally powerful material, which is also found in milk.

Therefore cheese, which contains this material as well as salt, is quite in its place at the end of dinner. It furnishes reinforcements for the stomach in cooking, and this is why you so often hear people say that a little cheese helps the digestion.

The _digestion_! Yes, that is the word I ought to have begun with.

It is the real name of all this cooking; an operation after which I would defy you to recognise the nice little cakes you have eaten, any better than your mamma can trace her pretty rosy-cheeked apples in the jelly which she left on the fire two hours ago. The stomach, as you see, is very busy quite as long a time as that, and if we have to be very careful (as I pointed out before) not to disturb him too suddenly in his work after dinner, it is also important that we should not, while at dinner, give him more work to do than he is capable of doing.

Although he is the master, he is but a puny fellow, as I have already pointed out; nevertheless, he works conscientiously, because he knows that the life of the whole body depends upon his exertions. Some people even say that in spite of his leanness he strips himself, at each digestion, of his interior skin, which he sacrifices to his work, and the fragments of which tend to increase and improve the stew which is entrusted to his care. Think of this, my dear, whenever a greedy fit comes over you, and recollect that such a disinterested public functionary deserves some consideration. Besides, there is serious danger, quite apart from any question of injustice, in overwhelming him with work. If your legs are wearied out, you have it in your power to lie in bed. If your arm is in pain, you can keep it at rest. But your stomach is like those poor people who have to support their families by the labor of each day. He, too, labors for others: he has no right to rest, no right to be ill, therefore; and when he begins to fail, woe betide you--you will have enough of it.

Children who have learnt nothing may laugh at all this, but you, my dear, are beginning to know something, and "science constrains,"

_i.e._ it has its claims and requirements. It requires you, to-day, not to be greedy, to-morrow, something else, and so on, continually, until you have become quite reasonable and wise. I am sorry for you if this vexes you, but it was your own wish to learn, and _science constrains_.

Indeed, I will whisper to you in confidence that this is the best excuse people who are unwilling to learn have to offer for refusing. They do not know what learning may lead to, and what a pity it would be if they could no longer be greedy, or ill-natured, or selfish. What would become of us all in such a case?

LETTER IX.

THE STOMACH--_(continued)_.

We made a very long story of the stomach last time, my dear child; and, after all, I see that there was one thing I forgot to tell you--viz., what it is like.

Have you ever seen a bagpiper, I wonder? A man who carries under his arm a kind of large dark brown bag, which he fills with air by blowing into it, and out of which he presently forces the same air into a musical pipe by pressing it gently with his elbow. If you never saw such a thing, it is a pity; first, because the bagpipe was the national instrument of our ancestors the Gauls, and is religiously preserved as such by the Scotch Highlanders and the peasants of Brittany--(two remnants of that ill.u.s.trious race, whose history I recommend to your careful perusal some day); secondly, and it is this fact which has the greatest interest for us just now, because that large bag, which is the princ.i.p.al part of the instrument, gives you a very exact idea of your stomach; for in fact it really and truly _is_ a stomach itself, and moreover, the stomach of an animal whose interior formation resembles yours very, very much.

And who do you suppose is this audacious animal, which presumes to have an inside so like that of a pretty little girl? Really, I am half ashamed to name him, for fear you should be angry with me for doing so. It is--it is the pig! The resemblance is not exactly a flattering one to you, perhaps, but we are all alike, and it would be worse than foolish to grumble at being created as we are. Moreover, there is one difference; the pig, who thinks of nothing but eating, has a very much larger stomach than we have, which is some consolation, at any rate.

Place the palm of your right hand on what is called the pit of the stomach, turning the ends of the fingers towards the heart; your hand will nearly cover the s.p.a.ce usually occupied by the stomach, and you may figure it to yourself as a rounded and elongated bag, bigger above than below, making a very decided bend inside as it descends from the heart downward; something like one of those long French pears, called "Bon-chretiens," if it were bent in the middle, and the big end of it were placed next the heart. As for the exact size of the bag, there is no telling it, for it depends upon circ.u.mstances. It is a very convenient bag in that respect; just such a one as you would like to have in your frock for a pocket; only there would be a danger of your being tempted to put too many things into it. For as you fill it, it expands, and enlarges itself like an indian-rubber ball, which, though only the size of an egg to begin with, becomes as big as your head if you blow hard into it. Then, as it gets empty, it recovers itself, diminishing gradually in size in plait-like contractions.

When people remain too long without eating, they have, as they say, twinges in the stomach. This is because the stomach, becoming by degrees quite empty, and contracting more and more, the surrounding parts which were sustained by it, lose their support, and strain at their ligaments, which now have all the weight to bear. Careless people, who do not think of such things, are reminded by the twinging pains that it is time to eat, just as a careless servant is called to order by the bell of which his master has pulled the string.

In your case, my dear child, such warnings are soon attended to, and you have not always even to wait till they come. But there are hundreds of miserable beings who are warned to no purpose, who cannot obey the master when he calls for his rations, because they have nothing to give him; and when this forced disobedience lasts too long, they end by dying of it. In cases like these, when human beings thus cruelly perish, the stomach is found to be contracted till it is scarcely bigger than one's finger.

On the other hand, a man once died suffocated from excess of food, after one of those great public dinners, which last four, six, or more hours--one can scarcely say correctly how long--and the doctors who examined him found his stomach so prodigiously enlarged that it alone occupied more than one-half of his inside. As you perceive, therefore, the stomach has, properly speaking, no fixed size. Its size depends upon what there is in it. It is like those men whose manners go up and down with their fortunes; who seem very grand people when their pockets are well filled, but become very small ones when their purses are empty. There is, nevertheless, this difference between them, that such men are fools, because they are men, and not _bags_; whereas the stomach is a sensible bag, fulfilling with intelligence the duties of its character as a bag. It is very fortunate for us that it is ready to change its size, according to the caprices of our appet.i.te; and dressmakers would do well if they could get a hint from it how to improve their style of pockets, which certainly cannot have cost their inventors any very great effort of imagination!

The way in which this extraordinary pocket empties itself is not less curious than the rest. As long as digestion is going on, the stomach is firmly closed at each end; at the upper one by the last ring of the _aesophagus_, and at the lower by another ring of the same kind, only stronger; the watchful guardian of the pa.s.sage which leads to the intestines. This ring is called the _pylorus_.

For once, here is a name which agrees with our method of describing the human machine, and I have much pleasure in translating it to you, although it is a Greek word. _Pylorus_ is the Greek for a porter; and our ring is indeed a porter like the one of which we have already said so much, and which I called last time the _porter up above_, in antic.i.p.ation of his colleague below.

The porter up above presides at the entrance; the one below at the exit, and both for the same purpose, namely, to _taste._ [Footnote: It would be absurd to say so in the common acceptation of the term; but according to No. 1 of Mr. Mayo's "Cla.s.sification of the impressions produced by substances taken into the fauces," viz., _"Where sensations of_ touch _alone are produced, as by rock-crystal, sapphire, or ice,"_ the word taste may be applied to the discriminating faculty of the _Pylorus_.--TR.]