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Our experiments not only proved the existence of a nervous apparatus in the above-mentioned glands, but also disclosed some facts clearly showing the participation of these nerves in normal activity.

The physiologist who succeeds in penetrating deeper and deeper into the digestive canal becomes convinced that it consists of a number of chemical laboratories equipped with various mechanical devices.

Edible substances evoke the secretion of thick, concentrated saliva. Why? The answer, obviously, is that this enables the mass of food to pass smoothly through the tube leading from the mouth into the stomach.

Thanks to our present surgical methods in physiology we can demonstrate at any time almost all phenomena of digestion without the loss of even a single drop of blood, without a single scream from the animal undergoing the experiment.

The digestive canal represents a tube passing through the entire organism and communicating with the external world, i.e. as it were the external surface of the body, but turned inwards and thus hidden in the organism.

Physiology has, at last, gained control over the nerves which stimulate the gastric glands and the pancreas.

In the case of the stomach, however, the nerves of the glandular cells were always severed when constructing an artificially isolated pouch and this, naturally, affected the normal work of the stomach.

Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts.

People are surprisingly off put just by saliva, the substance that you carry around in your mouth. You swallow it. You have no objection to it. But then it leaves your body, and you're just revolted. So it - that - just that right there to me is a fascinating thing.