1. When my food is chewed, it is rolled by my tongue into the oesophagus, or food-pipe, which is back of my windpipe, and leads from my mouth down along the side of my spine, to the left and upper end of my stomach.
2. My stomach is an oblong, soft, and fleshy bag, extending from my left to my right side, below my lungs and heart.
3. It is composed of three coats or membranes, and resembles tripe.
4. The outer coat is smooth, thick, and tough. It supports and strengthens the stomach.
5. The middle coat is fibrous. Its fibres have the power of contracting, sometimes pressing upon the food, and sometimes pushing it along toward the opening which leads out of the stomach.
6. The inner coat is soft, thick, spongy, and wrinkled. It prepares a slimy substance and a fluid. The slimy substance prevents the stomach from being irritated by the food. The fluid dissolves the food.
7. Food passes through several changes after it enters the mouth.
8. It is changed into pulp in the mouth, by the action of the teeth and the saliva. This is called mastication. It is changed in the stomach, by the action of the stomach and the gastric juice, into another kind of pulp called chyme. The chyme is changed by the bile and another kind of juice, called pancreatic
juice; these separate the nourishing from the waste substance. The nourishing, milk-like substance is called chyle. The waste substance passes from the body. The chyle is poured into a vein behind the collar bone, and passes through the heart to the lungs, where it is changed into blood.
9. If I would have a healthy stomach,