PROF GEO BACHMAN, Sworn In For The State, 115th To Testify

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PROF. GEO. BACHMAN, sworn for the Defendant.

Prof. of Physiology and Physiological Chemistry Atl. Col. Phys. &

Surgeons. Bomar says it takes 4 hours and a half to digest cabbage.

That's for the cabbage to pass from the stomach into the intestines.

The gastric digestion takes 4 hours and a half. That is the time it is

supposed to be in the stomach. More digestion occurs in the small intestine. The pancreatic juice helps digestion mostly in the small intestine. It consists of water in organic salts of which sodium carbonate is the most important, and a number of ferments. The ordinary time that it

takes wheat bread to pass out of the stomach is not less than three hours.

The time for a meal consisting of cabbage cooked for about an hour and

wheat biscuit to pass out of the stomach depends a great deal upon the

mastication of the food. The times given above have reference to the

most favorable conditions. If the cabbage is not well chewed it would

take considerably longer. It is impossible to tell exactly how long. There

is no regular rules about how long such substances as cabbage and wheat

bread will be found in a person's stomach. It depends upon too many

different factors. Even in a healthy normal stomach the digestion might

be arrested or retarded at any stage, as by strong emotion such as fear

and anger or violent physical exercise, or in the state of mastication.

The pyloris prevents passage of food to the intestines except when it is

liquid and when there is free hydrochloric acid in the stomach. If solid

food touches the pyloris it closes immediately and nothing passes for a

time. If there were particles of cabbage in the stomach unmasticated in

which you can see part of the leaf, they are liable to keep the contents of

the stomach in it seven or eight hours or longer by coming into contact

with the pyloris. The liquid contents would pass into the intestines. The

solid part would be retained for a very long time. The pyloris works

mechanically, and unless a chemist knows to what extent those unchewed

portions have affected the pyloris he can give no reliable estimate as to

how long such food has been in the stomach. It's a guess. The acid in

the stomach is hydrochloric, consisting of one atom of hydrogen and one

of chlorine. It combines with protein; only one percent of cabbage is

protein, and only about one percent of the cabbage is acted upon in the

stomach; the balance is acted upon in the small intestines, and in the

mouth, where digestion begins to a certain extent. The salts in the saliva

act on the starch in the cabbage. This cabbage (State's Exhibit G) I don't think has been masticated at all so far as these pieces are concerned. There can be no doubt that these pieces would retard the digestion and the passage from the stomach into the small intestines. The

presence of such cabbage would make it very uncertain as to how long

before the food would pass out of the stomach. I couldn't say, and I

don't think anybody could say, how long cabbage and wheat bread in

such condition would stay in the stomach. As far as wheat bread and

water are concerned the acidity of the stomach with reference to hydrochloric acid may go between 40 and 60 degrees, which is the average

height of the acidity. With wheat bread in the same shape of biscuit it

would take the acidity about an hour to reach that height. With cabbage

we don't know how long it would take it to reach that height. The acidity

may rise very quickly and decline slowly. It would not necessarily

take it one-half of the 4 1/2 hours necessary for digestion. When the acidity

reaches a certain height it begins to descend. The longer it stays in

the stomach it decreases. If you find 32 degrees in the body of a corpse

you cannot tell whether it is on the ascending or decreasing scale. There

is no data on how long it would take the acidity to reach its height in case

of cabbage. If a gallon of the juices of a corpse are taken from the body

and a gallon of embalming fluid, which is 8% formalin, is put in,

it would destroy the ferments in the pancreatic juices. There would be

no way to tell by testing such a body whether any of that pancreatic juice

had been in the lower intestine or not, for the only way to tell that is to

find the action of the ferment, and if the formalin has destroyed it you

can't tell anything about that at all. After formalin has been in the body

it is difficult to tell how long food has been in the stomach. Formalin destroys the pepsin in the stomach. I never heard of hydrochloric acid being measured by drops before, because it is vapor. If I investigated a

stomach and found wheat bread and cabbage, some of which was in that

condition (State's Exhibit "G") and approximately a drop and a half

or two drops of combined hydrochloric acid, the stomach being taken out

during a post mortem on a subject that has been interred nine or ten days, a gallon of the liquids of the body having been taken out and a gallon of embalming fluid put in it, and if I further found the acidity of the

stomach to be 32 degrees and practically no pepsin, and practically nothing

in the lower intestine, the body having been embalmed with formaldehyde,

it would be impossible for me or any other chemist or physician

to tell anything about the time it had been in the stomach. The acidity

of the stomach does not suffice to show it, because it may have been

higher than that. There may have been considerable free hydrochloric

acid, and that may have disappeared after the body had been embalmed,

or even before that some of it will combine with the walls of the body

and some passes out. Not finding anything in the lower intestine would

be of no value at all, because the ferments would be destroyed entirely.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

If I took the contents of an absolutely normal stomach and made a

positive test and found starch there, and there was nothing to indicate

that anything was stopped up, and the intestines six feet below were absolutely clear, and nothing has moved out of the stomach, that would

show me nothing as to how far digestion had pressed, for starch is

found in the stomach from the beginning of digestion until the last particle

of bread has passed out of the stomach and that may be three or

four hours. Medical men are able to compile tables showing how long it

takes to digest cabbage and other things by testing for protein, but not

for starch, because proteins are the only substances which combine with

the hydrochloric acid and which are digested in the stomach, and that

can be done only within certain limits and not with mathematical certainty.

If the starch digestion is not interrupted, maltose would be found

in the stomach, but if I made a test and found starch, but no maltose, I

could express no opinion unless the food had been well masticated, and

unless I knew how soon after the food entered the stomach that free hydrochloric acid appeared, because free hydrochloric acid stops the starch digestion. Finding starch and no maltose would not necessarily mean that digestion had not progressed very far, because free hydrochloric acid may have appeared soon after the food entered the stomach and stopped starch digestion. In the average case I would say the starch had not been in the stomach very long. In an ordinary normal stomach you might find maltose before the food reaches the stomach, even in the mouth. It depends on mastication. If I did not find it in the mouth or

stomach I could not say how long digestion had progressed. If I was

told that these samples (State's Exhibit "G") were taken from a normal

stomach within from 40 to 60 minutes after they were taken in it, I

would answer that they might have been in the stomach 7 or 8 hours.

When it is said in the books that it takes four hours to digest cabbage it

means cabbage which has been well chewed, not cabbage of that kind.

(State's Exhibit "G").

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

Cabbage, like this (State's Exhibit "G") could pass from the body

whole. Before it could be told with any degree of certainty how long after

eating a meal of bread and cabbage 32 degrees of hydrochloric acid

would be found, numerous observations would have to be made.