Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/36

36 and the result is that the whole system becomes gradually poisoned and imperfectly nourished.

The food-mass, saturated with the gastric juice which has been poured upon it and kneaded and churned into it, leaves the stomach by the Pyloric orifice on the lower right-hand side of the stomach and enters the small intestine.

The small intestine is a tube-like canal ingeniously coiled upon itself so as to occupy but a comparatively small space, but which is really from twenty to thirty feet in length. Its inner walls are lined with a velvety substance, and through the greater part of its length this velvety lining is arranged in transverse shelf-like folds, which maintain a sort of "winking" motion, swaying backward and forward in the intestinal fluids, retarding the passage of the food and providing an increased surface for secretion and absorption. The velvety condition of this mucous lining is caused by numerous minute elevations, something like the surface of a piece of plush, which are known as the intestinal "villi," the office of which will be explained a little further on.

As soon as the food-mass enters the small intestine it is met with a peculiar fluid called the bile, which saturates it and is thoroughly mixed up with it. The bile is a secretion of the liver and is stored up ready for use in a strong bag, known as the gall bladder. About two quarts of bile per day is used in saturating the food as it passes into the small intestine. Its purpose is to assist the pancreatic juice in preparing the fatty parts of the food for absorption and also to aid in the prevention of decomposition and putrefaction of the food as it