STORY – A STOMACH WITH A WINDOW
In
the poem, you read about a soldier called Martin. In 1822, he was eighteen
years old and was very healthy. When he was shot, he got seriously hurt. At
that time Dr. Beaumont was called to treat him.
Dr.
Beaumont cleaned the wound and put the dressing. After one and a half years,
the doctor found that Martin’s wound had healed except for one thing.
He
had a big hole in his stomach. The hole was covered with a loose flap of skin,
like the washer in a football. Press the skin and you could peep into Martin’s
stomach! Not only that, the doctor could also take out food from the stomach by
putting a tube in the hole.
Dr.
Beaumont felt he had found a treasure. Can you guess how much time he spent on
doing different experiments on this stomach?
Nine
years! During this time Martin grew up and got married. At that time scientists
did not know how food was digested? How does the liquid (digestive juices) in
the stomach help? Does it only help in making the food wet and soft? Or does it
also help in digestion?
Dr.
Beaumont took some liquid (juices) out of the stomach. He wanted to see what
would happen to a food item kept in a glass filled with it. Would it get
digested on its own? For this he did an experiment. With the help of a tube, he
took out some digestive juice from the stomach.
At
8.30am he put twenty tiny pieces of boiled fish in 10 millilitres of the juice.
He kept the glass at the same temperature as that of our stomach – about 30°C.
When he checked at 2 pm he found that the pieces of fish had dissolved.
Dr.
Beaumont tried this experiment with different food items. He gave Martin the
same food at the same time and then compared how long it took for food to be
digested in the glass and in Martin’s stomach. He recorded his observations in
a table.
So,
what does our stomach do? Dr. Beaumont did many experiments and found out many
secrets about digestion. He found that food digests faster in the stomach than outside.
Did you notice this in the table?
Our
stomach churns the food to digest it. The doctor also saw that the food did not
digest properly when Martin was sad. He also found that the juice in our
stomach is acidic. Have you heard of anyone talking about acidity -especially
when that person has not eaten well or the food is not digested properly.
Dr.
Beaumont’s experiments became famous across the world. After this many
scientists did many such experiments. What did you say? No, they did not shoot
people in the stomach. Nor did they wait for a patient with a hole in the
stomach. They used other scientific ways to look inside our bodies.
Children Did you like the story of Martin or,
should we say, the story of our own stomach?
THANK
YOU,
Thankyou mam I am 10 years old girl S.Akshara.I like to know about interesting and different things. I am studying in kendriya vidyalaya school.In my fifth std workbook I read this story.But I can't understand it because the print was not proper.I searched in Google and found this website.I thank you very much.I want you to give more interesting stories in this website. THANKYOU MISS AKUNURI NANDITHA.
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