I have told you what is made from the blood, and now you will want to know how the blood itself is made.
Blood made from food.
The blood in your body is made from the food that you eat. It is made very much in the same way that the sap in the plant is made. This sounds strange to you, but it is true. You remember that I told you in Part First that the plant’s food is in the ground, and that the root is its stomach. You remember what I told you about the little mouths in the root that suck up the plant’s food out of the ground. There are little mouths in your stomach that suck in the nourishing part of the food that you eat, as the mouths in the root suck up the nourishing part of the earth. And the stomachs of all animals have these little mouths.
The mouths in the stomach.
The mouths in the root of a plant do not, you know, suck up all the soil. They drink in only what is good to make the plant grow. So the mouths in the stomach of an animal do not suck up all the food; they suck up only that part of the food that will make the animal grow—that is, what will make good blood. There is, you know, no sap in the ground, but there is what can be made into sap. So there is no blood in your food, but there is in it what can be made into blood. It is the business of the mouths in the root to take in what will make sap, and so it is the business of the mouths in the stomach to take in what will make blood. And they generally do this business very faithfully. It is very seldom that they take in what they ought not to.
Variety of our food.
You have seen how many different things are made from the blood. This is very wonderful. But it is quite as wonderful that the blood can be made from so many different kinds of food as you sometimes take into your stomach. Just think of all the various things that you sometimes eat at dinner—meat, potato, turnip, squash, apple-sauce, cranberry, celery, pie, filberts, raisins, etc. It seems strange that red blood can be made from such a mixture as this. But so it is. There is something in all these different things that helps to make the blood.
Stomachs of animals suited to their food.
The blood is made from different things in different animals. The cow, you know, never eats meat. It would be of no use in its stomach. The mouths there would not suck up any thing from it. This is not their business. Their business is to suck up something from grass, and meal, and potatoes, etc., but not from meat. So grass would be of no use to a dog. The Creator has made the stomach of the cow in such a way that it can get from grass what is needed to make blood; and he has given such a stomach to a dog that blood can be made from the meat that he eats. Our stomachs are made in such a way that our blood can be made from a great many different things; and so the variety of our food is much greater than that of such animals as the cow and the dog.
Questions.—From what is the blood made? How is an animal’s stomach like the root of a plant? What part of the food do the mouths in stomachs and in roots suck up? What is said about the different kinds of food that blood is made from? Tell about the food of the cow and the dog. What is said about our stomachs?