SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH by David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1900

SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

David Paulson W. S. Sadler

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE DIGESTIVE PROCESS

SALIVA

The only digestive function the saliva seems to have is to act on starch by means of its digestive ferment, which is called ptyalin. This, under favorable conditions, quickly and readily changes cooked starch into sugar or some preliminary stage of the same. The newborn babe does not have this digestive ferment in its saliva; for until nature provides the child with teeth, it is unable to make use of solid food. The arrival of the first teeth is the signal for the appearance of small quantities of ptyalin in its saliva.

Quantity.— The quantity of saliva secreted in twenty-four hours has been variously estimated at from one to three pints. (See Kirk's Physiology, 351.) No doubt the excessive and abnormal stimulation of the salivary glands, due to the chewing of tobacco or gum, has a tendency to largely increase the quantity, much to the detriment of the quality.

How Stimulated.— The saliva is normally stimulated by dry foods and natural flavors. If food is not prepared in a tasteful and palatable manner, the saliva that is poured out is inferior in both quantity and quality.

How Hindered.— Actual laboratory experiments have demonstrated that drinking at meals greatly diminishes the quantity of saliva, and that the taking of such acids as vinegar, and some of the strong fruit acids, such as lemon, as well as the use of tea and coffee, practically destroy its activity.

Activity Ceases.— The saliva does not continue its activity in an acid medium. It was formerly supposed that there was sufficient quantity of acid gastric juice in the stomach to neutralize the saliva at the very beginning of the meal, but more recent experiments have demonstrated that the saliva continues its work in the stomach under normal conditions for half an hour or more before there is sufficient gastric juice poured out to entirely stop its action upon the starch.

GASTRIC JUICE

The digestive fluid of the stomach is called gastric juice. It acts upon the proteids, causing their small particles to swell and burst; also dissolving off the little proteid envelope that surrounds the small particles of fat. It is probable that it also has a certain action upon cane sugar, inverting, or changing it back, into glucose. One of the active agents of the gastric juice is hydrochloric acid, which serves the double purpose of killing germs in the stomach and supplying an acid medium without which pepsin can not act. In diseased conditions this acid is often either very deficient or practically absent, thus allowing the stomach to become a good breeding place for germs, and at the same time depriving the pepsin of its digestive power; or it may be present in such large quantities that it becomes irritating to the mucous membrane of the stomach, and lays the foundation for various digestive disturbances. The common use of pepsin is entirely uncalled

for, because it is rarely absent even under the most abnormal conditions. While the active digestive ferment of saliva is not present in the infant at birth, as nature does not provide it any starchy foods, pepsin is secreted in the infant's stomach from birth, so that it may be able to digest the proteids found in the milk. Another ferment present in the gastric juice is termed rennet, which has the faculty of curdling milk. When large quantities of milk are swallowed at once, this ferment is liable to produce large curds, which in a weak stomach may digest so slowly that decomposition may set in before the process is completed, producing the well-known condition called biliousness, for which the use of milk is so often responsible.

Quantity.— The quantity of gastric juice produced in the stomach in twenty-four hours varies from five to ten quarts. (See Kirk's Physiology, 351.)

How Stimulated.— The production of the gastric juice is encouraged by natural food flavors, digested starch, and the alkaline saliva, as well as by the presence of proteid food substances. (See Schafer's Physiology, 542.) This suggests the importance of eating starchy food so thoroughly cooked that the saliva can properly transform it, so that the loss of the stimulating property of the products of salivary digestion will not be experienced in the stomach.

How Hindered.— The stomach digestion is particularly susceptible to unfavorable influences. Abundant experience has demonstrated that the average person, when worried or in a depressed state of mind, is very likely to have his stomach digestion seriously interfered with. Recent laboratory experiments have shown that gastric juice acts only at a temperature very nearly the same as that of the body, so iced drinks and foods practically stop its activity until the stomach contents have had time to regain their normal temperature. But during this time the microbes have had abundant opportunity to proceed with their activity, and thus overwhelm, by their poisonous products, the already abused stomach glands.

Activity Ceases.— The activity of the gastric juice ceases very soon after it has been passed into the small intestine, where it meets with digestive juices poured out from the liver and pancreas, as these have an alkaline reaction, and thus quickly neutralize the acid gastric juice.

PANCREATIC JUICE

God has placed the pancreas just behind the stomach, apparently out of the way of danger, as it is one of the most important digestive organs found in the human body. One eminent authority has called it the digestive organ par excellence. (See Bunge's Physiological Chemistry, 178.) The pancreatic juice effects changes in all classes of foods, preparing them for absorption. It changes proteids into peptones. Instead of causing the proteid element to swell up, as in the case of the gastric juice, it dissolves it off from the outside, little by little. Its effect upon the proteids is due to a ferment called trypsin, which is present in the child even before birth. (See Schafer's Physiology, 336.) The pancreatic

juice also has a powerful digestive action upon starch. This is due to a ferment called amylopsin, which begins to appear in the infant about one month after birth. It has been found capable of converting forty thousand times its own weight of starch into maltose, or sugar. While the pancreas is pouring out a digestive juice into the intestines, to change starch into sugar, it is at the same time passing another secretion into the blood stream, which is carried to the muscles, and which enables them to utilize the sugar when it is brought to them. Serious disorders of the pancreas produce diabetes, a disease in which sugar accumulates in the blood. In many cases this is undoubtedly due to a failure of this particular secretion's being carried to the muscles, thereby enabling them to utilize the sugar brought to them by the blood stream. There is a beautiful spiritual lesson in this. While the Lord is putting it into our hearts and minds to go to help some one, the same Spirit is impressing that person's heart, preparing him to receive the truth we are about to bring. The pancreatic juice has another ferment, called steapsin, which possesses the power of splitting up a portion of the fats into glycerine and fatty acids; and these fatty acids, in coming in contact with the alkaline bile, form a soap which assists in emulsifying the remaining portion of the fats.

SPIRITUAL LESSON FROM THE PANCREATIC JUICE

While single food substances are digested by the saliva and gastric juice, the pancreatic juice is able to digest practically every food element. What the pancreatic juice is able to do for the body is a beautiful illustration of what faith will do for the soul. As it is possible for the pancreatic juice to digest all the elements of our physical food supply, so with faith “all things are possible.” Hope, trust, confidence, and courage are all useful factors in our moral equipment, but faith is the one thing essential. The just “live by faith.” Our courage may help us through difficulties, our confidence may cheer us in hours of darkness, our trust may uphold us in trial; but faith sustains us at all times, under all conditions, and in all places. Whether our spiritual food comes to us in the form of sunshine or shower, whether it comes to us in messages of love or mandates of sorrow, it makes little difference to living faith—the faith of Jesus; for as the pancreatic juice extracts the elements of nutrition from all food substances, so the Christian's faith is able to recognize and appropriate the elements of soul-nutrition from all the circumstances and experiences which a divine providence permits to overtake him.

Quantity.— Although far more effective in quality than any of the other digestive fluids, pancreatic juice is nevertheless the least in quantity. It has been estimated to be from five to six ounces in twenty-four hours.

How Hindered. It has been difficult to make the necessary observations to determine absolutely what conditions produce abnormal changes in the quality of the pancreatic juice, although there can be no doubt that the same general conditions that interfere with the activity of the saliva and gastric juice must act unfavorably upon the pancreatic secretion; for it partakes of the nature of both. The pancreatic juice is alkaline, and its activity continues to a greater or less extent through the entire length of the alimentary canal.