Читать книгу The Natural Food of Man. Being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts онлайн

31 страница из 58

The Stomach.—The position and form of the stomach are also of significance. In the carnivora, it is only a small roundish sack, exceedingly simple in structure; while in the vegetable feeders it is oblong, lies transversely across the abdomen, and is more or less complicated with ringlike convolutions—according to the nature of the food. This appears conspicuously in the primates, which include man, in the Rodentia, Edentata, Marsupials, and, above all, in the Ruminants. In the latter, it presents a series of from four to seven wide, adjoining and communicating sacks.

At a first superficial glance at the exteriors of the stomachs of the carnivora and that of man, we apparently perceive a far closer resemblance than between man’s stomach and that of a herbivorous animal. In one sense, there can be no question that there is a closer similarity; in another sense, it is not so. In man this organ is simple, but is divided into a cardiac and pyloric portion—thus occupying, as in many other anatomical respects, a middle line between the carnivorous and herbivorous mammalia. The inner surface of the stomach is covered with rugæ, or wrinkles, formed by the mucous membrane, which lines the whole intestinal canal, and which forms valvular folds; while in the carnivora the stomach is a simple globular sac, without these corrugations. As Dr Trall observed[7]: