Surprising power of digestion--Variety of sources of food--All structures, however different, formed from the same blood--General view of digestion, chymification, chylification, sanguification, nutrition--The stomach in polypes, in quadrupeds, and in man--Its position, size, and complexity, in different animals--Its structure; its peritoneal, muscular, and villous coats; and uses of each--Its nerves and bloodvessels, their nature, origins, and uses--The former the medium of communication between the brain and stomach--Their relation to undigested food--Animals not conscious of what goes on in the stomach--Advantages of this arrangement--The gastric juice the grand agent in digestion--Its origin and nature--Singular case of gunshot wound making a permanent opening into the stomach--Instructive experiments made by Dr Beaumont--Important results. If, in the whole animal economy, where all is admirable, there be one operation which on reflection appears more wonderful than another, and which evinces in a higher degree the prodigious resources and power of the Creator in fashioning every thing to His own will, it is perhaps that by which the same kind of nutriment is extracted from the most opposite varieties of food consumed by living beings. For, singular as it may appear, recent researches tend to establish the fact, that, even in animals differing so widely in their aliment as the herbivorous and carnivorous quadrupeds, the ultimate products of digestion in both--the chyle and the blood--are _identical_ in composition, in so far at least as can be determined by their chemical analysis.[16]