[180]. Phil. Trans. A. D. 1772, “On the Digestion of the Stomach after Death,” by John Hunter, F. R. S. and Surgeon to St. George’s Hospital.
[181]. This phenomenon is frequently exhibited, in a very satisfactory manner, by inferior animals who die suddenly. Mr. Hunter noticed it particularly in fish.
[182]. We allude to a highly interesting paper, to which we shall have frequent occasion to refer in the progress of the present inquiry, entitled “Observations on the Digestion of the Stomach after Death,” by Allan Burns, Lecturer on Anatomy and Surgery in Glasgow. Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journ. for April, 1810.
[183]. Hunter’s Observations on Digestion, p. 185.
[184]. Adams’s Observations on Morbid Poisons, edit. 2, p. 30, where he says “but for this purpose, Mr. Hunter saw that the animal must be in health immediately before death, otherwise neither the quantity nor quality of the secretion would be equal to the purpose; he was confirmed in this by the instances in which he saw the stomach digested; both were men who had died from a violent death; both had been previously in sufficient health to eat a hearty meal. The fair inference from these was, that when men die of disease, the appetite usually ceases, and probably the secretion of the gastric juice also.”
[185]. Burns, loco citato.
[186]. “It will generally be found that, where the coats of the stomach are softened by the gastric juice, the vessels are unable to resist the force of the syringe in injecting the body. In such subjects, therefore, we find the cavity of the stomach filled with wax, and we likewise see masses of it collected between the coats of the viscus.”
[187]. Mark this circumstance, for we shall have occasion to revert to it, when we come to consider the part of the stomach which undergoes solution from the action of the gastric juice.
[188]. A case of extensive solution of the Stomach by the Gastric fluids, after Death. By John Haviland, M. D. Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge. Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. 1, part ii, p. 287.
[189]. He had taken, at intervals, a small quantity of port wine and water.