many.
AMY: And I think the bread we eat doesn’t always find them wearing
clean white dresses, either. There is Uncle John; his teeth are all
stained with nasty tobacco juice.
MOTHER: But they _should_ be dressed as I have said, and they need
careful brushing and washing every day. They should not be used to
crack nuts, for they may get broken. If they are not well cared for,
the dresses wear out, and great holes can be seen in them. Sometimes
they can be mended, and again they cause the master of the house much
trouble, and he is obliged to get some one to take them away, because
they give him so much pain.
I was quite surprised at the way these servants treated me, though I
suppose they knew best what to do. Some of them cut me in two. Others
tore me into pieces and ground me till I thought I was passing through
another mill. As I had a chance, I looked around, and then I saw the
room I was in had a beautiful arched ceiling of a pale pink color.
There was a large servant behind those dressed in white, and he wore
a pink uniform. You should have seen the way he rolled me over and
over in that room. The servants in white dresses never stirred from
where they were standing, but the one wearing the pink uniform jumped
from one side of the room to the other, and seemed to be a very lively
fellow. I don’t know what he would have done had he not been fastened
to the floor. Sometimes, I am told, he peeps out between the folding
doors to see what is going on outside, or to tell what kind of work
is being done inside. I have heard that sometimes his dress becomes a
dirty yellow or brown, and a man with a wise look comes and asks this
servant to step outside a moment, till he can see how his uniform looks.
HELEN: How funny to think of our teeth and tongue as our servants!
MOTHER: But that is what they are. There is another group of servants
in this passage, called _glands_. They have little rooms opening into
the passage near the floor, and also in the back part of the room. If
you ever visited a cave, you remember the walls were wet, and water was
dropping from them. You know the skin on the outside of your body feels
dry. Some parts of the body have skin inside, but it is _wet_ instead
of dry. It is that way in this hall. That which makes it so is called
_saliva_, and it is the duty of the servants called glands to pour
saliva over the food as soon as it comes through the front doors, while
the tongue rolls it about, and the teeth grind it.
ELMER: But what good does that do?
MOTHER: It moistens the food and makes it slippery, so it can pass
on to the kitchen. Perhaps you know bread is partly made of starch.
Another thing the saliva does is to turn starch into sugar, and this
makes less work in the kitchen downstairs, as the cook down there has
but little to do with starch.
AMY: How may we know when the starch in bread or biscuit is changed to
sugar?
MOTHER: If you let the teeth chew your food a long time, until it
becomes well mixed with saliva, you will find that it tastes sweet.
This is because the starch has become sugar, though you must not think
this kind of sugar is as sweet as the sugar which you buy.
HELEN: If the walls in this room moisten the food, why should we drink
while eating?
MOTHER: It is not best to drink much when you eat, and not at all
unless your food is very dry. The glands furnish from one to three
pints of saliva a day. If you drink much, the saliva is not well
mixed with the food, and it is hurried down to the kitchen before the
servants have finished their work. This makes extra work for the cook
downstairs.
OUR KITCHEN
MOTHER: We will now let Bread proceed with its story. Remember I am
telling you what it would say if it could talk. Now listen. While I
was in the passage and the servants were making me ready to go to the
kitchen, I saw a small pink curtain in the back end of the room, and
I wondered what was behind it. I soon found out. After the tongue had
pulled and pushed me around and rolled me over as long as he wished, he
pushed me back toward the curtain, and I found myself in a room with no
floor. I saw a passage which opens into the nose, but as soon as I came
in sight, a curtain fell back and closed it, so I knew I was not wanted
there. Then I saw another door, which I afterward learned led to the
bath-room in the lungs, but as I was about to go in, a little trap door
closed tightly, and so I found that was not the way to the kitchen.
There was still another passage, for this room seemed to be filled with
doors, even though it was so small, but that led to the ear. I began to
think I was not wanted at all, for every door I came to was shut in my
face, as it were.
HELEN: I don’t wonder Bread didn’t know which way to go, do you,
mother? and it was a stranger in the house, too.
MOTHER: I was just thinking about going back through the folding doors
through which I came, when a door opened in the back part of the
throat, and I began to slide downstairs. Such queer stairs you never
saw. They seemed to grow larger as I went down, and smaller at the top,
so they kept pushing me, and I could not go back if I would.
[Illustration: _The stomach._]
PERCY: I suppose it was the same way when I swallowed a button the
other day. I wanted it back badly enough, but it wouldn’t come.
HELEN: That shows you should never put such things as pins and buttons
in your mouth.
ELMER: And what did the kitchen look like?
MOTHER: Like no room you ever saw in your life. I looked around for the
corners, but there were none. It is shaped some like an egg. Here is a
picture, which will help you to understand the shape of the room.
You see it has two doors, or openings,--one at which to go in, and the
other to pass out. The walls are a pale pink color and are full of
wrinkles if the room is empty. When the master of the house sends down
so much bread or other food that it fills the kitchen full, the walls
become smooth and the room is larger, but when the food first begins
to go down, it finds the room quite small, and the walls full of folds,
or wrinkles.
This room is very strong, as there are really three walls, one inside
the other. The pink lining inside is made of wet skin, something like
that found in the room upstairs. The middle wall is made of muscles,
which cross one another in different ways; for the kitchen has many of
these useful servants. The outer coat, or “overcoat,” of the stomach
has for its work to pour out a kind of water to keep the walls moist so
they will not stick to other things which are packed so closely in the
trunk of the body. I am sure no person could ever pack so many things
in a trunk the same size without crowding some of them or getting them
out of order.
HELEN: But I would like to know who acts as cook in this curious
kitchen.
MOTHER: The name of the head cook is Di-ges´tion. There is a whole
family of helpers, named Juice, whose work it is to assist Di-ges´tion.
Of course they do not boil and bake, as we do, but they take the food
and make it ready for the use of the body. Perhaps you would call it
di-gest´ing it.
The chief helper is a very important person, called Gastric Juice. When
the kitchen is empty, Gastric Juice stays in some tiny bags or bottles
which cover the walls of the kitchen all over, but as soon as anything
comes into the room from the stairway at the top, she comes out and
goes to work. She pours a fluid which looks like water, over the food,
which dissolves, or melts it. If you could look inside you might think
the stomach was “sweating;” but it is only Gastric Juice coming out
to care for the food you have sent down to build and mend the body.
Several quarts come from the walls of the kitchen every day.
Were you ever in a ship at sea? If so, you know that everything in the
boat was shaking and moving. As soon as Bread comes into the kitchen,
it finds the room moving like that, and it is thrown from one side to
the other, and churned up and down, over and over, till, if you could
see it, you would never think it was bread at all. Gastric Juice melts
and mixes it, and it becomes so changed it looks very much like paste.
After Bread comes downstairs, some potatoes, fruit, and other things
“come tumbling after,” but after all has been in the kitchen two hours,
you could not tell which is bread, fruit, or potatoes; for they are all
mixed together.
I expect you are wondering how the food would ever get out of the
kitchen. After it was shaken and churned several hours, the walls
gave it a push, and it came to the door where visitors pass out. Such
a queer door it was, too, but it opens and shuts like the one at the
entrance to the passage. This door has neither hinges nor rollers. It
was kept tightly closed while the food was churned about and melted,
and it looks quite like a boy’s lips when he is going to whistle. As
Bread came near, the door opened, and part of the food paste passed
through into another room. Strange as it may seem to you, this door
seems to do a kind of thinking, and if food tries to get through
before it is made as fine as it should be, the door seems to say, “No,
_sir_; you can not go through here;” and it shuts so close together
that not another thing can pass out. So when the food came the first
time, the door seemed to think part of it was too big to go through,
and it was sent back, to be churned and squeezed again before it could
go into the next room with the rest of the food.
ELMER: I didn’t know it took so much work and such a long time to
digest what we eat.
MOTHER: This should teach us to use care in what we send into the
stomach. Let me tell you a few other things about the stomach, which
we call the kitchen of the body. The helper, Gastric Juice, does her
work perfectly if she is used well; but when the master of the house
is unkind, she always makes him suffer for it. Sometimes he sends down
a lot of cold water, ice-cream, or some other kind of ice, when she
is just ready to begin her work. This makes her kitchen so cold that
she is obliged to wait till it gets warm again. She doesn’t like much
water when she has work on hand; for she thinks Saliva and herself can
moisten the food as much as it needs.
AMY: Does Di-ges´tion like hot drinks, mother?
MOTHER: No; they burn the tender walls of the stomach and make them
weak. Tea and coffee are hurtful to the stomach, as well as to the
nerves and other parts of the body. Another thing Di-ges´tion likes is
to have all the food she is going to work on at once. That means we
should eat what we need and then stop. If the master of the house sends
down a good-sized dinner, and, after waiting an hour or two, sends
some more, the poor cook has a hard time, and it is no wonder that she
gets sulky. It is as though you had been at work during the day, and
then I should ask you to work all night, and give you no time to rest.
The cook in our kitchen is willing to work hard, and then she wants
a rest, and this she ought to have. She hates to work at night after
working all day, but some masters are so unkind as to even call her up
after she has gone to bed, thinking her day’s work is done; and she
works and works away while other parts of the body have rest.
HELEN: I suppose that is when we eat between meals or late at night.
MOTHER: Yes; and another thing the cook dislikes is to have her kitchen
filled so full that no more can get in. She must have room to work.
ELMER: That means we should not eat too much.
MOTHER: That is right. We should never eat till we feel so full we can
take no more. If a builder was beginning to build or mend a house and
you should pile bricks, timber, stones, and lime around him till he had
no room to work, he would say, “Please take part of this out of my way,
and then I can do something.” So the stomach wants just enough, but no
more, and we should not make the cook cross by abusing her in this way.
She also dislikes hot things, such as mustard, pepper, and spices. How
would your eye feel if you should get some pepper or mustard in it?
ELMER: It would smart.
PERCY: It would look red.
MOTHER: That is the effect they have on the stomach, too. Neither does
the cook like to have much fat or sugar. Sometimes she gets so provoked
when the master of the house sends down things she can not use, or
too much even of that which is good, that the doorway to the stairway
opens by which they came down, and she throws them back in his face.
He has a sorry time of it then, and it may be quite a while before she
is pleased again. But she only does this after she has suffered a long
time, and when she knows it is for the good of the body-house.
AMY: What a long time it takes to fix up the food we eat so it can be
used in the body! I would like to know where the food goes after the
cook in the kitchen has digested it.
MOTHER: We will finish this part of the story in the next chapter.
THE EATING ROOM
MOTHER: While waiting for the door to open to let the food pass from
the stomach kitchen, let me tell you that the walls of the kitchen are
covered with hundreds of little mouths; for you must remember this room
is like no other that was ever made. These tiny mouths keep drinking
the food which is digested, and it is taken into the blood through the
tiny blood-vessels which cover the stomach.
At last comes the food which could not pass the door again, and this
time it passes through into a long, narrow room, with walls quite like
those of the kitchen. Sometimes a plum pit gets into the kitchen; the
cook is unable to use it, and when it goes up to the door, it closes
quickly, so it must stay where it is. Sometime after the door will open
and let it through.
HELEN: That is the same as though you should tell me I should not do a
thing, and then, because I teased or coaxed, you should let me do what
you had before said I should not.
MOTHER: Yes, that is the way with this door-keeper. But sometimes the
door closes very tightly, and then there is trouble, for that which can
not get through the second door must find its way back through the
first. We should be very careful about swallowing large seeds of fruit,
buttons, or anything that is hard and can not be digested. People are
sometimes made very ill in this way. But now we will learn what is done
in the second room.
Perhaps it might be called the “serving room;” for it is here the food
is made ready for the eating room. Here we find two assistant cooks.
The name of one is Pan-cre-at´ic Juice, and the other is called Bile.
Each one has a room of his own. Pan-cre-at´ic Juice has his home in a
room back of the kitchen, which is called the pancreas. Bile lives in
the largest room in the body-house, which is called the liver.
The liver might be called a factory; for it has hundreds of little
rooms in which Bile is made. It has a waiting room, called the gall,
where Bile stays when he is not wanted. This tiny room is close to the
liver, and from that Bile goes to the serving room. On the way he meets
Pan-cre-at´ic Juice, and they go on to their work together.
Bile, like some other servants, is hard to please, and he will do only
one kind of work. It is the duty of these cooks to finish up the work
that Gastric Juice has begun. Bile will work with hardly anything but
fats, and it is his work to make them into such tiny drops that they
can be used in the body. He must also furnish part of the fuel to keep
the body warm. He sometimes gets lazy or angry if the master of the
house gives him too much work, or if he sends too much fat or sugar
into the serving room. The master of the house tells his friends he is
“bilious,” which means that Bile is out of temper and wants less hard
work and more rest.
PERCY: Is Pan-cre-at´ic Juice so particular as Bile?
MOTHER: No; he is much more obliging, and is willing to do anything
that needs to be done. Together these helpers work over the food after
it comes from the kitchen till it is very fine and creamy.
AMY: Does this room look like the kitchen?
MOTHER: The walls are very much the same, and they keep eating or
sucking up the food that is wholly digested, much as a sponge sucks up
water. A part is taken up this way and goes into the blood-vessels at
once, but part is sent on to the eating room, where hundreds of little
people are waiting for their breakfasts and dinners.
HELEN: How does the eating room look?
MOTHER: This room is very narrow and about twenty feet long. You must
not think it is a straight room twenty feet long, for it is not. At one
side it is fastened to a thin band, and the band is gathered like a
frill or ruffle, so the room, though it is folded over and over, never
gets tangled. Perhaps I might say it is like a tube more than a room.
The little folks who eat here do not sit at tables as you do. They are
fastened to the walls, so they are always in the same places. Another
name for this room is the “small intestine.”
ELMER: I would like to see some of the little folks who eat there. How
large are they?
MOTHER: They are so very, _very_ small you could not see them unless
you had a strong glass to help you. They stand up straight, like the
soft, silky part of velvet or plush. They are called Villi.
As the food comes in from the serving room, another helper, called
In-tes´ti-nal Juice, takes any part which the other servants have
not finished as it passed through their rooms, and thus digestion is
complete. The Villi soak the food up as it passes them, as a plant
draws water and food from the ground.
HELEN: But how does it all get into the blood?
MOTHER: I was just about to tell you that part of the story. You have
seen little creeks, and you know they flow into larger ones, which form
small rivers, and they, in turn, flow in some broad river toward the
sea. So this creamy fluid which is sucked up by the Villi goes into
tiny veins; these open into larger ones, till all flow in one stream
about as big as a slate-pencil up to a large vein near the neck, and
from there to the heart, where the stream is changed to blood, and is
ready for use in the body. Part of the food takes another way to get to
the heart. It goes first to the liver, which takes the part it needs,
and the rest goes on to the heart.
HELEN: Then all we eat finally gets into the blood.
MOTHER: No; there is always some part that can not be used. Passing
through the eating room the waste is carried into a garbage box, called
the colon, which should be emptied every day.
Now let us see if we can give the names of the different rooms a slice
of bread passes through before it reaches the heart and becomes blood.
ELMER: First, the passage, which is the mouth, down the steep stairs
or gullet, through the stomach kitchen, through the serving room, the
eating room, or small intestine, and from there straight to the heart,
or else by another road through the liver to the same place.
MOTHER: Very good. Now what juices make the bread ready to become blood.
PERCY: First, the saliva in the mouth.
AMY: And gastric juice in the stomach.
HELEN: Then bile from the liver, and pan-cre-at´ic juice from the
pancreas.
ELMER: The last was the in-tes´tin-al juice.
MOTHER: That is right, and let me tell you that in our bodies about
twenty pounds of juices are made every day. Now I think we can remember
that the food passes through five rooms, and it takes five juices to
make it into blood. Two of the juice family, which have the long names,
in-tes´tin-al and pan-cre-at´ic, are willing to work on all parts of
the food. The others work chiefly on one part only. Saliva digests
starch. Bile works on fats. Gastric juice takes the part which is
called al-bu´men.
“Behind the bread, the snowy flour;
Behind the flour, the mill;
Behind the mill, the growing wheat
Nods on the breezy hill;
Over the wheat is the glowing sun,
Ripening the heart of the grain;
Above the sun is the gracious God,
Sending the sunlight and the rain.”
FOOD AND FUEL
MOTHER: See that engine. Can you tell me what gives it the power or
strength to draw its heavy load?
HELEN: Steam gives it power.
MOTHER: And what makes the steam?
ELMER: The fire in the furnace makes the water boil, and steam comes
from the boiling water.
MOTHER: Then the engine can do nothing unless it has fuel to burn and
water to boil. It might be the best ever made, and yet do no work and
have no power even to move itself. Do you suppose the engineer is
careful to take plenty of the best fuel he can get, and to have a good
supply of water, when he has a long journey and a heavy train?
PERCY: I am sure he would be. I have read that it is counted one of the
worst things an engineer can do to let his boiler get dry.
MOTHER: Well, in some ways our bodies are like the engine. Can you
guess what the fuel is we must have?
AMY: Oh, I know! It is the food we eat.
ELMER: And we must have water to drink, too.
MOTHER: Yes; but what would you think of an engine driver who would
fill the furnace of his engine with stones or sand, and fill the boiler
with beer or whisky?
PERCY: I think he wouldn’t have much steam, and his engine would soon
be ruined.
MOTHER: Then what shall we say about food and drink for the body, which
is a hundred times more perfect in all its parts than the best engine
men ever built, and so is much more apt to be injured?
HELEN: We ought to give it the very best food and drink we can get.
MOTHER: I think so, too. You know an engine works several hours, and is
then sent to an engine house to be made ready for another trip, and,
while it is running, the driver steps out at every station, almost,
with his oil-can in one hand and something to clean with in the other,
and he keeps cleaning it, oiling it, feeding it, and letting it drink
till he comes to the end of his journey. Can you think how the body is
different from this?
[Illustration: “_The engine takes water without stopping._”]
ELMER: When the body-machine starts running in the journey of life, it
never stops to rest till it is worn out and can work no more.
MOTHER: Yes, and we must remember that some parts work night and day,
summer and winter, as long as we live. Yet they are wearing out all
the time, and must be fed and cleaned and cared for while they are
working. There are some railroads made with tanks or ditches between
the rails, and the engine takes water without stopping. So our bodies
must take food, drink, and all they need without stopping the living
machinery. It is true some parts must rest every day; but others never
stop working till we die. We should study, then, to know what we ought
to eat and drink to make up the waste and keep the body well. Some
kinds of birds and animals live on flesh. Others eat only grass and
grains. The squirrel and the monkey eat nuts and fruits. Can you tell
me some of the different things that men use as food?
[Illustration: A squirrel]
AMY: They eat flesh, grains, and fruits.
ELMER: And we eat other things, such as salt, sugar, and milk.
MOTHER: Yes, while people _can_ eat all these things, yet _all_ of them
are not the very best food, and, like the careful engineer, we should
learn just what is good for the human machine, and give it only the
best of what it can use. What do you think was given to men to eat at
first?
AMY: Where can we find out, mother?
MOTHER: In the first chapter of the Bible. Perhaps Helen will read it
for us.
HELEN: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for
meat.”
MOTHER: The word “meat” means food. This was spoken before God had
cursed the earth on account of sin, and so everything that grew was
“good,” as He had said. We see from this that all kinds of plants
bearing seed, and all kinds of fruit, were good for food. No doubt if
God had thought meat was good for man, He would have had a butcher shop
somewhere in the garden of Eden, and some beef or mutton hanging from
the limb of a tree.
PERCY: But what made the people begin to eat flesh, mother?
MOTHER: After a time the flood came and destroyed everything on the
earth except what Noah had in the ark with him, and when he came out of
the ark, God told him that people might eat the flesh of animals, and
they have kept on eating it ’til the present time.
ELMER: But is it the best food, mother?
MOTHER: No, we can not say it is the very best; for, as time has
passed, the animals have become sickly, and many wise doctors say it is
unsafe to eat their flesh. Cattle which have been killed to eat have
been found with diseased lungs, livers and kidneys. People sometimes
become very ill and many have died from eating their flesh.
HELEN: I should think if they choose such food it would be like the
engine driver filling his furnace with poor coal when he could get
plenty that was better.