4. The ileocæcal valve is thoroughly competent for food entering the colon from the ileum.
5. The usual movement of the transverse and ascending colon and the cæcum is an antiperistalsis. This recurs in periods about every fifteen minutes, and each period lasts commonly about five minutes; the waves recur during a period at the rate usually of eleven waves in two minutes. This antiperistalsis gives new significance to the ileocæcal valve; for the food, now in a closed sac, is thoroughly churned and mixed by the constrictions running towards the cæcum, and again exposed to absorbing walls without any interference with the processes in the small intestine.
6. As soon as new food enters the large intestine a strong general contraction takes place along the cæcum and ascending colon, forcing some of the food onward; a moment later antiperistaltic waves begin to pass.
7. With the accumulation of material in the transverse colon, deep tonic constrictions appear one after another and carry the material into the descending colon, leaving the transverse and ascending portions free for the antiperistaltic waves.
8. In emptying the large intestine the material in the lower descending colon is first carried out by combined peristalsis and pressure of abdominal muscles; the remainder of the material is then spread into the evacuated region, and this region is again cleared; the second remainder may be similarly affected. In normal life the new food arriving in the colon must force forward the old contents of the ascending and transverse colon.
9. The observations have revealed no evidence of antiperistalsis in the small intestine, but since the ileocæcal valve will allow nutrient material under pressure to pass backward, the antiperistalsis of the large intestine may force into the small intestine a considerable portion of a large nutrient enema. Segmentation in the small intestine affects such an enema precisely as it affects food which has passed normally through the stomach.
10. Signs of emotion, such as fear, distress, or rage, are accompanied by a total cessation of the movements of both large and small intestines. The movements continue in the cat both during sleep and at night.
THE BATTLE CREEK LABORATORIES
THE MAMMOTH SANITARIUM AND THE LARGE ADOPTED FAMILY OF DR. AND MRS. J. H. KELLOGG
[A report of one experiment has been selected from Modern Medicine relative to the work of the laboratories connected with the Battle Creek Sanitarium because it relates to the effect of cooking and mastication upon food in illustration of the statement of Dr. Campbell pertaining to these aids to digestion. Much more evidence could be had from the Sanitarium reports, but sufficient has already been given herewith from various authoritative sources to justify our claims of the great importance of mouth-treatment in human nutrition.
It may be said here, however, that the trial of thorough mouth-work as an aid to digestion, which has been in progress at the Sanitarium for more than a year, and which has finally been accepted and prescribed as the first requirement of the treatment of patients, is of the utmost significance. This is, by far, the largest sanitarium in the world, having some hundreds of physicians, nurses, and other attachés, and treating many thousands of patients annually. The “cure” is based upon natural methods of recuperation, and while all of the staff, both medical and surgical, are fully equipped diplomatists, and whereas the organisation has a legally and professionally accepted medical school of its own, so-called medicines are rarely used, and never except as antidotes to specific poisons. Nature is assisted by scientific means to do the curing, and now that an economic nutrition to relieve the exhausted system of the patient from all possible strain through ample mouth-treatment of food, as intended by the anatomical, dental, and chemical plan on which man is constructed, has been tried and accepted as a fundamental principle of the institution, it gives a practical indorsement of the claims set forth in “Glutton or Epicure,” and in this present book, and declares that they are of greatest importance in securing health and efficiency.