Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/39

Rh the form of a grayish, pasty substance, called chyme, which is a mixture of some of the sugar and salts of the food, of transformed starch or glucose, of softened starch, of broken fat and connective tissue, and of albuminose.

The chyme leaving the stomach, enters the small intestine, as we have described and comes in contact with the pancreatic and intestinal juices and with the bile, and intestinal digestion ensues. These fluids dissolve most of the food that has not already been softened. Intestinal digestion resolves the chyme into three substances, known as (1) Peptone, from the digestion of albuminous particles; (2) Chyle, from the emulsion of the fats; (3) Glucose, from the transformation of the starchy elements of the food. These substances are, to a large extent, carried into the blood and become a part of it, while the undigested food passes out of the small intestine through a trap-door-like valve into the large bowel called the colon, of which we shall speak by-and-by.

Absorption, by which name is known the process by which the above-named products of the food, resulting from the digestive process, are taken tip by the veins and lacteals, is effected by endosmosis. The water and the fluids liberated from the food-mass by the stomach digestion are rapidly absorbed and carried away by the blood in the portal vein to the liver. The peptone and glucose from the small intestines also reaches the portal vein to the liver through the blood vessels of the intestinal villi, which we have described. This blood reaches the heart after passing through the liver, where it