Book 3
7
But just as masticated food is more altered than the latter kind, so is food which has been swallowed more altered than that which has been merely masticated. Indeed, there is no comparison between these two processes; we have only to consider what the stomach contains — phlegm, bile, pneuma, [innate] heat,Note especially pneuma and innate heat, which practically stand for oxygen and the heat generated in oxidation. cf. p. 41, note 3. and, indeed the whole substance of the stomach. And if one considers along with this the adjacent viscera like a lot of burning hearths around a great cauldron — to the right the liver, to the left the spleen, the heart above, and along with it the diaphragm (suspended and in a state of constant movement), and the omentum sheltering them all — you may believe what an extraordinary alteration it is which occurs in the food taken into the stomach.
