Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Assimilation

ASSIMILATION, in animal economy, is that hidden natural process by which living beings are enabled to convert such bodies as have a certain affinity to them, or at least after having undergone some preparation and change of their properties, into their own substance and nature. Hence every culinary process is conducted on chemical principles analogous to those on which the digestion of food appears to depend in the human stomach.—See Chyle, Digestion, Nutrition, Saliva.