Note 14 — WHAT SENSE? TASTE[12]

Dr. George Monks of Boston, Massachusetts, has recently called the attention of the author to the fact that the length of the intestines in man have been known to vary from nine feet to twenty-nine feet.

In the longer ones the papillæ convenenti which serve for absorption and which line the inside of the intestines extended only part way down the channel, but in the shorter ones they lined the channel throughout its entire length, giving inferential evidence that the strain of continued excess of waste material had lengthened the intestines for the sole purpose of providing storage room for the waste. Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, has even proposed removing some eighteen feet of intestine by surgical operation, including the troublesome vermiform appendix, as being unnecessary in connection with cooking and the prevalence of partly predigested foods.