Processed internally

Usage examples of digested.

The experiments proving that the leaves are capable of true digestion, and that the glands absorb the digested matter, are given in detail in the sixth chapter.

As we learned in chapter II, the starches can be digested only after they are turned into sugars in the body.

It is not, however, quite correct to say that fats are hard to digest, because, although from their solid, oily character, they take a longer time to become digested and absorbed by the body than most other foods, yet they are as perfectly and as completely digested, with the healthy person, as any other kind of food.

The food, of course, is put into the mouth, chewed by the teeth, and softened and digested in the stomach and intestines.

The lymphatics in the wall of the intestine take up some of the digested food from the cells and pass it on through the lymph glands of the abdomen to the lymph duct which empties into a vein near the heart.

We have also seen that butyric acid, which is much more efficacious than propionic or valerianic acids, digests with pepsin at the higher temperature less than a third of the fibrin which is digested at the same temperature by hydrochloric acid.

I will now give in detail my experiments on the digestive power of the secretion of Drosera, dividing the substances tried into two series, namely those which are digested more or less completely, and those which are not digested.

I gently opened one leaf, and the meat now consisted of a minute central sphere, partially digested and surrounded by a thick envelope of transparent viscid fluid.

On the other two leaves there were minute spheres of only partially digested meat in the centre of much transparent fluid.

This result surprised me much, as two physiologists were of opinion that fibrocartilage would be easily digested by gastric juice.

There could be no doubt that the secretion had penetrated the outer coats of the grains, and had partially digested their contents.

In both cases an excess of the substance to be digested was subjected to the liquid.

Now, it is a remarkable fact, which affords additional and important evidence, that the ferment of Drosera is closely similar to or identical with pepsin, that none of these same substances are, as far as it is known, digested by the gastric juice of animals, though some of them are acted on by the other secretions of the alimentary canal.

And it is well known that this tissue cannot be digested by the gastric juice of animals.

I expected that it would have excited the leaves greatly and been digested by the secretion, but in this I was mistaken.