2626. The stomach is the pulmonic intestine; the duodenum, through its combination with the liver, is the vascular intestine, having a predominant venous character; or the one is the arteriose, the other the venous stomach.
2627. The gastric digestion has reduced the food to the state of a vegetable; but this does not yet suffice for it to become a nutritive matter, namely, a new organism. As the primary organism originates, so also must the body originate in the process of nutrition, and thus from the element of the Organic. Now, this primitive matter or element is the mucus, the "infusorium." There is still therefore a process necessary to redissolve the vegetable and convert it into protoplasma or primary mucus.
2628. This, however, occurs only through the process of putrefaction being wrought in the food. This process is not simple solution, but decomposition, or separation of the constituent parts. The acid vegetable parts, which had been active through the process of fermentation, must be therefore decomposed, and in such wise, indeed, that what is mucous shall be separated from them.
2629. This separation or analysis takes place by means of the Bile, which combines with the acid of the chyme.
2630. The biliary digestion is an alkalizing or saponaceous process. Through it the chyme becomes separated into nutritive juice or chyle, and into excrement.
2631. The excrement is what is vegetable, or the product of fermentation combined with the bile. The chyle is what is infusorial, or the product of decomposition. Nutrition therefore begins anew. Its process is a "generatio originaria."
2632. In digestion the processes of both organic kingdoms, namely, the fermentative and putrefactive, are repeated.
Absorption.
In the intestine, not merely lung and vascular system, have been represented, but also the integument or organ of absorption.
2633. After the animal food has been reduced to the vegetable, and this again to the infusorial state, it can be taken up by the body. It now becomes absorbed in the small intestine. The small intestine is the tegumentary system, or the root-bark.