The silver state. [volume] (Unionville, Nev.) 1870-1903, 1881-06-18
THE TIME TABLE STOMACH.

Alexis ST. Martin is dead lie will
be remembered as the French Canadian
gentleman who had hole put in his
side by the accidental shooting off of a
gun loaded with duck. shot, so that his
stomach was exposed and the digestion
of food therein made apparent The
wound was long time healing but
after the cure was perfected as well as
il could be, doctor named Beaumont
unfortunately took it into his head that
it would be advancement of science to
feed the shattered wreck lot of vari-
ous kinds of food from time to time and
note the hours and minutes consumed
in digestion. The result is that you can
hardly pick up work on physiology or
hygiene without seeing in it table Of
various kinds of food, with the time in
which each will digest in the human
system, all based on the timing of st.
Martin stomach by Beaumont. 1t does
not seem to have occurred to any one
that the functionsof awounded stomach,
acting under such unnatural conditions,
were not even true statement OF the
unfortunate victims own digestive ca
pacity in his natural condition, to say
nothing of it's being a measure for
humanity in general. Neither has any
one suggested that the matter of taste
or agreeable sensation of one kind of
food over another, which varies greatly
in ditferens persons, might have some
thing to do with it. For instance, GER
tain kinds of food are agreeable and
wholesome to one, but to another that
very food may be nauseous and innutri-
tious. To say that both persons should
cat the same and be equally nourlshed
by it is ridiculous yet that is precisely
what is in effect claimed by those who
relv on these tables which are based on
such abnormal conditions. To say that
a healthy, vigorous man shall not eat a
hard boiled egg if he wants to, because
st. Martins wounded stomach and in
valid condition failed readily to digest
it, is absurd. Perhaps hard boiled eggs
were not suited to his taste and physi-
cal structure. 1t may be that he could
not have eaten them without distress at
any time. So with boiled cabbage, or
cheese. These articles were probably
not known to st. Martin, who was 8
hunter and trapper, living far away
from settlements; and VIXEN he was
forced to eat them he most likely did so
under protest. And no record was kept
as far as appears, as to the effect of con-
fining the victim to any one kind OF diet
for length of time, to see if accustom-
ing his system to unusual or any special
kind of food would not have made
difference in it's power to digest it. All
we have is certain isolated experiments
and scrappy facts, embracing the items
and figures presented. 1t is altogether
likely that if the process of digestion
could be accurately timed in various
persons, a considerable difference would
appear in the result; that it woald be
shown that such food as is tasty and
agreeable would, as a rule, better nour-
ish the body and be more easily digested
than that which is distasteful, or maybe
nauseous. And inasmach as tastes differ
SO widely, there would be correspond
ing difference in the power of different
stomachs to digest different kinds of
deod, and the time occupied in doing it.