INFLUENCE OF TEA, COFFEE AND COCOA ON DIGESTION.
DR. JAMES W. FRASER has recorded the result of an interesting series of experiments on the action of our common beverages on stomachic and intestinal digestion. The experiments have been most carefully arranged from a physical standpoint, and give us some valuable hints on the digestion of the chief alimentary principles. They are of much value in showing how standard preparations of the peptic and pancreatic ferments are modified in action when our ordinary daily beverages are allowed their free action on the digestion of various articles of food. The digestive processes were carefully investigated, and absorption was imitated by a proper dialyzing arrangement. An artificial peptic juice, and afterward an artificial pancreatic juice, were employed, and the amount of nitrogenous matter dialyzed was carefully estimated. The food stuffs experimented on were raw and cooked serum and albumens, syntonin, albumen, casein, gluten, starch, and oleine. The results obtained show that all the three typical infused beverages—tea, coffee, and cocoa—retard the digestion and absorption of all the nitrogenized proximate principles of dietetic substances when peptic and pancreatic digestion are taken together, and that they uniformly retard peptic digestion, although tea may assist the diffusion of peptones from the stomach. Pancreatic digestion is also uniformly retarded, and diffusion thereafter is but rarely assisted, so that neither of them compares advantageously with water as a standard beverage for experimental investigations.—Selected.