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.

As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.

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.

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.

From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands.

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