Among the most interesting researches of Spallanzani were his experiments to prove that digestion, as carried on in the stomach, is a chemical process. In this he demonstrated, as Rene Reaumur had attempted to demonstrate, that digestion could be carried on outside the walls of the stomach as an ordinary chemical reaction, using the gastric juice as the reagent for performing the experiment. The question as to whether the stomach acted as a grinding or triturating organ, rather than as a receptacle for chemical action, had been settled by Reaumur and was no longer a question of general dispute. Reaumur had demonstrated conclusively that digestion would take place in the stomach in the same manner and the same time if the substance to be digested was protected from the peristalic movements of the stomach and subjected to the action of the gastric juice only. He did this by introducing the substances to be digested into the stomach in tubes, and thus protected so that while the juices of the stomach could act upon them freely they would not be affected by any movements of the organ. Following up these experiments, he attempted to show that digestion could take place outside the body as well as in it, as it certainly should if it were a purely chemical process. He collected quantities of gastric juice, and placing it in suitable vessels containing crushed grain or flesh, kept the mixture at about the temperature of the body for several hours. After repeated experiments of this kind, apparently conducted with great care, Reaumur reached the conclusion that "the gastric juice has no more effect out of the living body in dissolving or digesting the food than water, mucilage, milk, or any other bland fluid."(3) Just why all of these experiments failed to demonstrate a fact so simple does not appear; but to Spallanzani, at least, they were by no means conclusive, and he proceeded to elaborate upon the experiments of Reaumur. He made his experiments in scaled tubes exposed to a certain degree of heat, and showed conclusively that the chemical process does go on, even when the food and gastric juice are removed from their natural environment in the stomach. In this he was opposed by many physiologists, among them John Hunter, but the truth of his demonstrations could not be shaken, and in later years we find Hunter himself completing Spallanzani's experiments by his studies of the post-mortem action of the gastric juice upon the stomach walls.