653. On collecting the gastric juice and placing it in contact with an alimentary substance out of the stomach, its solution takes place more slowly, but not less completely, than when retained in the stomach. An ounce of this fluid was placed in a vial with a piece of boiled, recently salted beef, weighing three drachms; the vial was then tightly corked, and immersed in water, raised to the temperature of 100°, previously ascertained to be the ordinary heat of the stomach. In forty minutes the process of solution had commenced on the surface of the beef. In fifty minutes the texture of the beef began to loosen and separate. In sixty minutes an opaque and cloudy fluid was formed. In one hour and a half the muscular fibres hung loose and unconnected, and floated about in shreds in the more fluid matter. In three hours the muscular fibres had diminished about one half. In five hours only a few remained undissolved. In seven hours the muscular texture was no longer apparent; and in nine hours the solution was completed. 654. At the commencement of this experiment a piece of the same beef of equal weight and size was suspended within the stomach by means of a string. On examining this portion of beef at the end of half an hour, it was found to present precisely the same appearance as the piece in the vial; but on the removal of the string at the end of an hour and a half the beef had been completely dissolved, and had disappeared, making a difference of result in point of time of nearly seven hours. In both, the solution began on the surface, and agitation accelerated its progress by removing the external coating of chyme as fast as it was formed. 655. An ordinary dinner having been taken, consisting of boiled salted beef, bread, potatoes, and turnips, with a gill of pure water for drink, a portion of the contents of the stomach was drawn off into an open mouthed vial, twenty minutes after the meal. The vial was placed in a water-bath, maintained steadily at a temperature of 100°. It was continued in this temperature for five hours. At the end of that time the whole contents of the vial were dissolved. On comparing the solution with an equal quantity of chyme taken from the stomach, little difference could be distinguished between the two fluids, excepting that it was manifest that the digestive process had proceeded somewhat more rapidly in, than out of the stomach. The food, in this experiment, after having remained in contact with the stomach for the space of twenty minutes, had imbibed a sufficient quantity of gastric juice to complete its solution.