Chyle

Use in the book

Feelings are described as a kind of chyle produced by the elaboration of sensations; organs become several stomachs, with digestion and filtration named separately. In the account of books that are disagreeable to taste but useful to reflection, chyle is precisely what the reader should seek. Another fragment contrasts the digestion and evacuation of the mind, but leaves the two things compared unnamed. Its requirement for chyle therefore cannot be expanded into a confident identification of those antecedents.

Places to read

1. I, p. 295, entry 3, ¶1Feelings are compared with the product of processed sensation.
2. II, p. 617, entry 3, ¶1The reader seeks nutritive value beneath disagreeable flavor.
3. II, p. 492, entry 8, ¶1A comparison with unnamed terms distinguishes digestion from evacuation.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains chyle, including where the French prints chîle. Its existing notes explain the historical nutritive-fluid sense. Déjection in the last witness means evacuation, not sadness, and the unnamed “one” and “other” remain open.

Use in the book

A material between food and blood

Burton includes Chylus among the difficult words for which his anatomy digression prepares ordinary readers. Its explanation connects what happens to food with the production of the humours. Blood is made in the liver from the most temperate portions of chyle; phlegm from its colder portion; choler from its hotter portions. “Temperate” here concerns the balance of qualities. Chyle supplies the material from which those humours are made in these definitions. The following account of melancholy calls its source the more sedimentary part of nourishment without explicitly repeating the word chyle.

The route has several cooperating parts. The stomach is the kitchen that turns food into chyle. The intestines help alter, retain and distribute it; the mesenteric veins attached to the jejunum carry part of it toward the liver. The portal vein receives these veins and conveys chyle from the stomach and intestines to the liver. The liver then turns it into blood to nourish the body. Burton’s fourfold sequence distinguishes chewing, formation of chyle, conversion into blood and assimilation in the bodily parts. This is the historical physiological route described in the text.

The account is not wholly consistent in its numbering or syntax. The passage speaks of the “first concoction in the Liver” and says that Chylus is “excluded”; the modern edition renders the latter phrase as chyle being “separated out.” The later description places the first stage in the stomach and makes the liver responsible for a second stage. The wording should remain visible rather than being silently rewritten into a single orderly scheme. The edition’s note acknowledges the difficulty and leaves collation with Burton’s medical sources pending.

When the route is obstructed

In the causes of hypochondriacal or windy melancholy, Burton reports Montaltus’s account from Galen: heat and obstruction of the mesenteric veins are named as an immediate cause, with the passage of chyle to the liver delayed or stopped, or the chyle corrupted into rumbling and wind. The anatomical route now serves an explanation of illness. The movement can be delayed or stopped; it is the chyle itself, rather than its movement, that is understood to undergo corruption. Burton’s original sentence compresses these subjects together; the modern version separates them. The marginal Latin corroborates the blocked passage and the subsequent corruption, but remains a citation mediated by Burton.

The continuation supplies reported cases of heat and obstruction and then brings in other affected organs. Hot-liver/cold-stomach combinations, a weakened liver and, in Montanus’s account, sometimes a cold liver receive places in the discussion. The chyle explanation is therefore one attributed mechanism within a collection of competing and cooperating causes, not Burton’s exclusive explanation of the disorder.

Related entries

Concoction; Humour; Meseraic; Ventricle; Oppilation (future batch); Excrements; Radical moisture

Places to read

1. Anatomy digression, First Partitionchyle among the difficult terms that motivate the digression
2. Division of the body, humours and spiritsthe difficult “excluded” clause, the white-juice definition, and the temperate, colder and hotter portions of chyle
3. Similar partsmesenteric and portal-vein route from stomach and intestines to liver
4. Dissimilar partsstomach production, intestinal handling and hepatic conversion into blood
5. Soul and facultiesChilification within the fourfold order of concoction
6. Causes of hypochondriacal or windy melancholyinterrupted passage, corrupted material, supporting cases and alternative organ conditions

In this edition

“Chylus” and “Chilus” both become “chyle.” The spelling is modernized while the historical route and transformations remain. “Chilification of this so chewed meat in the stomack” becomes “the conversion of chewed food into chyle in the stomach”; the whole phrase supplies the process and location.

The modern column explicitly supplies “the chyle” as the subject of being corrupted. This is a grammatical clarification of Burton’s compressed sentence, not a new physiological claim. The English following the Latin in the accompanying note is the present editor’s translation of Burton’s marginal quotation. The unresolved first-concoction wording is preserved and flagged, rather than reconciled by assertion.

chilification

Printed “Chilification” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Conversion of chewed food into chyle in the stomach.

Context: Burton distinguishes this stomach process from subsequent conversion to blood.

Grammar: Process noun, second member of a fourfold sequence including mastication.

Source: original body

Source wording: Chilification of this so chewed meat in the stomack

chyle · Chylus · local use 1

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Technical name for digestive nutritive juice, introduced among terms needing explanation.

Context: Burton explains the pedagogical purpose of his digression.

Grammar: Noun in a list of difficult anatomical terms.

Source: original body

Source wording: Arteries, Chylus, Pituita

chyle · Chylus · local use 2

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Digestive nutritive juice, here named as what is excluded or separated out in a syntactically difficult account of acquired humours and hepatic processing.

Context: Burton compiles inherited nutrition accounts; the editor retains rather than resolves the sequence.

Grammar: Subject of the passive is excluded; preceding relative clauses have compressed reference.

Source: original body

Source wording: coming and proceeding from the first concoction in the Liver, by which meanes Chylus is excluded.

Uncertainty: First concoction in the liver differs from the later stomach-first sequence; excluded is rendered separated out, with source collation pending in the accompanying note.

chyle · Chylus · local use 3

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Nutritive juice whose most temperate portions are made into blood.

Context: Burton’s historical humoral description; blood is the product, liver the place of production.

Grammar: Of-phrase naming material from which blood is made.

Source: original body

Source wording: made of the most temperate parts of the Chylus in the Liver

chyle · Chylus · local use 4

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

White juice derived from stomach-digested food; its colder portion yields phlegm in the liver.

Context: Burton defines the material while describing phlegm; liver modifies generation of phlegm.

Grammar: Material complement of begotten, with a parenthetic definition.

Source: original body

Source wording: begotten of the colder part of the Chylus, (or white juyce coming out of the meat digested in the stomack) in the Liver

chyle · Chylus · local use 5

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Nutritive juice whose hotter portions are said to yield choler.

Context: Burton’s inherited physiological explanation.

Grammar: Material complement of begotten; choler is the subject.

Source: original body

Source wording: begotten of the hotter parts of the Chylus, and gathered to the Gall

chyle · Chylus · local use 6

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Nutritive juice conveyed from stomach and intestines toward the liver.

Context: Burton assigns the vessel a conveying function.

Grammar: Object of takes and conveys; he refers to the portal vein, whom to mesenteric veins.

Source: original body

Source wording: by whom he takes the Chylus from the stomack and guts, and conveys it to the Liver.

chyle · Chylus · local use 7

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Digestive nutritive juice into which the stomach turns food at the first digestive stage.

Context: Burton marks kitchen as a comparison with as it were.

Grammar: Into-complement marking result; stomach is agent in the anatomical personification.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: the kitchin (as it were) of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into Chylus

Modern rendering, Modern wording: It is, so to speak, the kitchen of the first stage of digestion, turning our food into chyle.

Word and construction: Indexed Chylus is one component of the aligned construction. The modern sentence supplies It is from the preceding description of the stomach and redistributes the original relative clause as turning our food into chyle.

Alignment scope: Redistributed construction, not a strictly coextensive isolated phrase: modern It is makes the original implied copular structure explicit.

chyle · chylus

Printed “chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Digestive nutritive juice received, retained and distributed by the intestines after leaving the stomach.

Context: Burton describes contributing parts rather than sole agency.

Grammar: Object of three coordinated verbs; the ileum participates with other intestines.

Source: original body

Source wording: which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the chylus from the stomack.

chyle · Chylus · local use 8

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Nutritive material converted into blood by the liver in the second stage.

Context: Burton’s historical blood-making account.

Grammar: Object of turne; liver is the grammatical and physiological agent.

Source: original body

Source wording: it serves to turne the Chylus to bloud, for the nourishment of the Body.

chyle · Chylus · local use 9

Printed “Chylus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Digestive nutritive juice converted to blood in the third member of the fourfold sequence.

Context: Burton’s fourfold order counts chewing separately; it must not be forced into the earlier numbering.

Grammar: Object of turne, with into marking the resulting blood.

Source: original body

Source wording: the third is in the Liver, to turne this Chylus into bloud, called Sanguification

chyle · Chilus

Printed “Chilus” (English; family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Digestive nutritive juice whose movement toward the liver is said to be delayed or stopped, or whose material is said to be corrupted into rumbling and wind.

Context: Montaltus is reported as citing Galen; heat and obstruction are immediate causes in that account.

Grammar: Genitive-like of-phrase dependent on passage; the latter predicates implicitly shift subject from passage to material.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: the passage of the Chilus to the liver is detained, stopped or corrupted, and turned into rumbling & winde.

Modern rendering, Modern wording: the passage of chyle to the liver is delayed or stopped, or the chyle is corrupted and turned into rumbling and wind.

Word and construction: Indexed Chilus is one component of the aligned sentence. The modern version explicitly supplies the chyle as subject of is corrupted and introduces a separate or clause to distinguish the material from its passage.

Alignment scope: Whole original clause aligned with its modern syntactic clarification; the supplied subject and redistributed alternatives are explicitly identified.

Uncertainty: The supplied modern column makes the implied subject switch explicit; historical medical sources have not been independently collated.

chylus / chilus

Printed “Chili” (Latin; Latin spelling family). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Of the digestive nutritive juice called chyle, naming the material whose passage to the liver is obstructed.

Context: Latin cited in Burton’s margin, followed by modern editorial translation; not an independent modern assertion.

Grammar: Latin genitive singular dependent on nominative transitus; ablative absolute quibus obstructis gives the obstructed-vein condition.

Source: original marginal note

Source wording, Original wording: quibus obstructis prohibetur transitus Chili ad jecur

Modern rendering, Modern wording: their blockage prevents the passage of chyle to the liver.

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Edition note: checked against modern editorial translation of the quoted Burton marginal Latin