That dissolvent, which stimulates and pricks the stomach,
does, by that very uneasiness, prepare for it a very lively
pleasure, when its craving is satisfied by the aliments. Then man,
with delight, fills his belly with strange matter, which would
create horror in him if he could see it as soon as it has entered
his stomach, and which even displeases him, when he sees it being
already satisfied. The stomach is made in the figure of a bagpipe.
There the aliments being dissolved by a quick coction, or digestion,
are all confounded, and make up a soft liquor, which afterwards
becomes a kind of milk, called chyle; and which being at last
brought into the heart, receives there, through the plenty of
spirits, the form, vivacity, and colour of blood. But while the
purest juice of the aliments passes from the stomach into the pipes
destined for the preparation of chyle and blood, the gross particles
of the same aliments are separated, just as bran is from flour by a
sieve; and they are dejected downwards to ease the body of them,
through the most hidden passages, and the most remote from the
organs of the senses, lest these be offended at them. Thus the
wonders of this machine are so great and numerous, that we find some
unfathomable, even in the most abject and mortifying functions of
the body, which modesty will not allow to be more particularly
explained.
SECT. XXXVI. Of the Inward Parts.
I own that the inward parts are not so agreeable to the sight as the
outward; but then be pleased to observe they are not made to be
seen.
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