The Physiology of Taste by Brillat Savarin (bearly read books txt) 📖
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spread through the whole system a luxury unknown to the profane.
We have not, however, reached the last term of progression of
pleasure.
LADIES.
There are times when our wives, sisters, and cousins are invited
to share in these amusements. At the appointed hour, light
carriages, prancing horses, etc., hearing ladies collect. The
toilette of the ladies is half military, and half coquette. The
professor will, if he be observant, catch a glimpse of things not
intended for his eye.
The door of the carriages will soon be opened, and a glimpse will
be had of pates de Perigord, the wonders of Strasburg, the
delicacies of d’Achard, and all that the best laboratories produce
that is transportable.
They have not forgotten foaming champagne, a fit ornament for the
hand of beauty. They sit on the grass—corks fly, all laugh, jest,
and are happy. Appetite, this emenation of heaven, gives to the
meal a vivacity foreign to the drawing-room, however well
decorated it may be.
All, however, must end; the oldest person present gives the
signal; all arise, men take their guns, and the ladies their hats-
-all go, and the ladies disappear until night.
I have hunted in the centre of France, and in the very depths of
the departments. I have seen at the resting places carriage loads
of women of radiant beauty, and others mounted on a modest ass,
such as composes the fortunes of the people of Montmorency. I have
seen them first laugh at the inconveniences of the mode of
transportation, and then spread on the lawn a turkey, with
transparent jelly, and a salad ready prepared. I have seen them
dance around a fire lighted for the occasion, and have
participated in the pleasures of this gypsy sport. I am sure so
much attraction with so little luxury is never met with elsewhere.
Les haltes de la chasse are a yet virgin subject which we have
only touched, we leave the subject to any one who pleases to take
a fancy to it.
MEDITATION XVI.
ON DIGESTION.
We never see what we eat, says an old adage, except what we
digest.
How few, however, know what digestion is, though it is a necessity
equalizing rich and poor, the shepherd and the king.
The majority of persons who, like M. Jourdan, talked prose without
knowing it, digest without knowing how; for them I make a popular
history of digestion, being satisfied that M. Jourdan was much
better satisfied when his master told him that he wrote prose. To
he fully acquainted with digestion, one must know hoth its
antecedents and consequents.
INGESTION.
Appetite, hunger, and thirst, warn us that the hody needs
restoration; pain, that universal monitor, never ceases to torment
us if we do not obey it.
Then comes eating and drinking which are ingestion, an operation
which begins as soon as the food is in the mouth, and enters the
oesophagus.
During its passage, through a space of a few inches much takes
place.
The teeth divide solid food, the glands which line the inside of
the mouth moisten it, the tongue mingles the food, presses it
against the palate so as to force out the juice, and then collects
the elements in the centre of the mouth, after which, resting on
the lower jaw, it lifts up the central portion forming a kind of
inclined plane to the lower portion of the mouth where they are
received by the pharynx, which itself contracting, forces them
into the oesophagus.
One mouthful having thus been treated, a second is managed in the
same way, and deglutition continues until appetite informs us that
it is time to stop. It is rarely, though, that it stops here, for
as it is one of the attributes of man to drink without thirst,
cooks have taught him to eat without hunger.
To ensure every particle of food reaching the stomach, two dangers
must be avoided.
It must not pass into the passage behind the nose, which luckily
is covered by a veil.
The second is that it must not enter the trachea. This is a
serious danger, for any particle passing into the trachea, would
cause a convulsive cough, which would last until it was expelled.
An admirable mechanism, however, closes the glottis while we
swallow, and we have a certain instinct which teaches us not to
breathe during deglutition. In general, therefore, we may say,
that in spite of this strange conformation, food passes easily
into the stomach, where the exercise of the will ceases, and
digestion begins.
DUTY OF THE STOMACH.
Digestion is a purely mechanical operation and the digestive
apparatus, may be considered as a winnowing mill, the effect of
which is, to extract all that is nutritious and to get rid of the
chaff.
The manner in which digestion is effcted has been so long a
question for argument, and persons have sought to ascertain if it
were effected by coction, fermentation, solution, chemical, or
vital action.
All of these modes have their influence, and the only error was
that many causes were sought to be attributed to one.
In fact food impregnated by all fluids which fill the mouth and
oesophagus, reaches the stomach where it is impregnated by the
gastric juices, which always fill it. It is then subjected for
several hours to a heat of 30 [degrees] Reaumer; it is mingled by
the organic motion of the stomach, which their presence excites.
They act on each other by the effect of this juxtaposition and
fermentation must take place. All that is nourishing ferments.
In consequence of all of these operations, chyle is elaborated and
spread over the food, which then passes the pylorus and enters the
intestines. Portion after portion succeeds until the stomach is
empty, thus evacuating itself as it was filled.
The pylorus is a kind of chamber between the stomach and the
intestines, so constructed that food once in it can ascend only
with great difficulty. This viscera is sometimes obstructed when
the sufferer, after long and intense agony, dies of hunger.
The next intestine beyond the pylorus is the duodenum. It is so
called because it is twelve fingers long.
When chyle reaches the duodenum, it receives a new elaboration by
being mingled with bile and the panchreatic juice. It loses the
grey color and acidity it previously possessed, becomes yellow and
commences to assume a stercoral odor, which increases as it
advances to the rectum. The various substances act reciprocally on
each other; there must, consequently, be many analagous gasses
produced.
The impulse which ejected chyle from the stomach, continues and
forces the food towards the lower intestines, there the chyle
separates itself and is absorbed by organs intended for the
purpose, whence it proceeds to the liver, to mingle with the
blood, which it revives, and thus repairs the losses of the vital
organs and of transpiration.
It is difficult to explain how chyle, which is a light and almost
insipid fluid, can be extracted from a mass, the color of which,
and the taste, are so deeply pronounced.
Be that as it may, the preparation of chyle appears to be the true
object of digestion, and as soon as it mingles with the
circulation, the individual becomes aware of a great increase of
physical power.
The digestion of fluids is less complicated than that of solids,
and can be explained in a few words.
The purely liquid portion is absorbed by the stomach, and thrown
into circulation; thence it is taken to the veins by the arteries
and filtered by urethras, [Footnote: These urethras are conduits
of the size of a pea, which start from the kidneys, and end at the
upper neck of the bladder.] which pass them as urine, to the
bladder.
When in this last receptacle, and though restrained by the
spinchter muscle, the urine remains there but a brief time; its
exciting nature causes a desire to avoid it, and soon voluntary
constriction emits it through canals, which common consent does
not permit us to name.
Digestion varies in the time it consumes, according to the
temperament of individuals. The mean time, however, is seven
hours, viz., three hours for the stomach, and the rest of the time
for the lower intestines.
From this expose which I have selected from the most reliable
authors, I have separated all anatomical rigidities, and
scientific abstractions. My readers will thence be able to judge
where the last meal they ate is: viz., during the first three
hours in the stomach, later in the intestinal canal, and after
seven hours, awaiting expulsion.
INFLUENCE OF DIGESTION.
Of all corporeal operations, digestion is the one which has the
closest connection with the moral condition of man.
This assertion should amaze no one; things cannot be otherwise.
The principles of physiology tells us that the soul is liable to
impressions only in proportion as the organs subjected to it have
relation to external objects, whence it follows that when these
organs are badly preserved, badly restored, or irritated, this
state of degradation exerts a necessary influence on sensations,
which are the intermediates of mental operations.
Thus the habitual manner in which digestion is performed or
affected, makes us either sad, gay, taciturn, gossiping morose or
melancholy, without our being able to doubt the fact, or to resist
it for a moment.
In this respect, humanity may be arranged under three categories;
the regular, the reserved, and the uncertain.
Each of the persons who belong to each of the series, not only
have similar dispositions, and propensities, but there is
something analagous and similar in the manner in which they
fulfill the mission from which chance during their lives has
separated them.
To exhibit an example, I will go into the vast field of
literature. I think men of letters frequently owe all their
characteristics to their peculiar mode of life. Comic poets must
be of one kind, tragic poets of another, and elegiac, of the
uncertain class. The most elegiac and the most comic are only
separated by a variety of digestive functions.
By an application of this principle to courage, when Prince Eugene
of Savoy, was doing the greatest injury to France, some one said,
“Ah, why can I not send him a pate de foie gras, three times a
week I would make him the greatest sluggard of Europe.”
“Let us hurry our men into action, while a little beef is left in
their bowels,” said an English general.
Digestion in the young is very often accompanied by a slight
chill, and in the old, by a great wish to sleep. In the first
case, nature extracts the coloric from the surface to use it in
its laboratory. In the second, the same power debilitated by age
cannot at once satisfy both digestion and the excitement of the
senses.
When digestion has just begun, it is dangerous to yield to a
disposition for mental work. One of the greatest causes of
mortality is, that some men after having dined, and perhaps too
well dined, can neither close their eyes nor their ears.
This observation contains a piece of advice, which should even
attract the most careless youth, usually attentive to nothing. It
should also arrest the attention of grown men, who forget nothing,
not even that time never pauses, and which is a penal law to those
on the wrong side of fifty.
Some persons are fretful while digestion is going on. At that
time, nothing should be suggested to and no favors asked of them.
Among these was marshal Augereau, who, during the first
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