2577. The proper function of the intestinal system is the digestion with all its divisions. There is an animal and a vegetative, or oral and abdominal digestion.
a. Oral Digestion.
2578. Oral digestion is a mortifying or putting to death of the food.
2579. Since what is organic only serves as aliment for the animal, but nothing can be assimilated to the latter, without its having been previously reduced to the original condition of Infusoria, so also must the first act of the digestive process depend upon this, or converting the organic into primary organic bodies.
2580. This reduction to the primary condition is a putting to death of the organic individual. Organisms only which have been killed, can be converted into infusorial matter, and are then nutriment for the animal. The first act of digestion is consequently an act of putting to death.
2581. The act of killing consists of two moments, the mechanical and dynamical, or in lacerating and poisoning.
Laceration.
2582. The mechanical act of putting to death commences with the search after nutriment, and thus with the movement of the feet; to this succeeds the prehension, or seizure with the claws or hands.
2583. This motion of the limbs is then repeated in the cephalic members, or the jaws.
2584. The seizure of the food with the cephalic arms or jaws, is the infliction of a wound commensurate with the position and form of the teeth. The teeth are digits of the cephalic limbs, or being devoid of any fleshy layer, claws. A gripe with such digits is in itself the infliction of a wound. For, in order that the food be grasped with only sufficient firmness to admit of its being drawn into the mouth, the sharp digital points of the mouth, i. e. the teeth, must make an incision therein.