2160. All solution is accompanied by oxydation. The gastric juice is in its action an acid.
2161. The gastric juice obtains its oxygen from the spleen. The spleen is the stomachic lung. This is attested by its position and close approximation to the stomach; by its black, venous, and deoxydized blood, which in certain diseases has been secreted even in the stomach; by its want of any excretory duct; by its tissue, which resembles that of the oxydized placenta; furthermore by the natural character of this function when contrasted with the unnatural quality of other useless functions that have been assigned to it; and lastly too, by the fact that, without this opinion be admitted, it must remain a superfluous organ, and as regards use, unknown. After a series of years, during which this doctrine has been combated upon all sides, without, however, a single reason, save and except that it was not believed, being advanced by its opponents, I must still persist in the correctness of the above view.
Vascular Intestine.
2162. In the duodenum the analysis of the food takes place through the medium of the bile. It is consequently the biliary intestine or stomach.
2163. The biliary intestine does not stand upon a par with the other intestines, but has an equal rank with the stomach. It is therefore not confined within the mesentery, but can expand itself like the stomach; it has its vessels and nerves. In it the separation of the chyme into chyle and excrementitious matter takes place.
2164. What the spleen is for the stomach, that is the liver for the duodenum; it is the hepatic stomach, and consequently the vascular stomach.
2165. The liver is the ramification of the intestinal canal along with the whole vascular system.
2166. Now, as the analysis is the principal function in the whole process of digestion; so is the liver the chief organ of all digestive organs.
2167. The liver is the centre, the brain of the digestive system, because it is the blossom, the synthesis of the vascular system. From it everything emanates, and upon it everything which concerns digestion, ay, the whole body, retrogressively operates. If the liver suffers or undergoes functional derangement, the whole vascular and tegumentary formation then becomes a liver, as is exemplified in the disease called jaundice.
2168. The bile effects the analysis or separation through its basic or alkaline character, since it combines with the acids of the chyme, and thereby forms the excrementitious matter.