vat quotes

Some physiologists will have it that the stomach is a mill;others, that it is a fermenting vat;others again that it is a stew-pan;but in my view of the matter, it is neither a mill, a fermenting vat, nor a stew-panbut a stomach, gentlemen, a stomach.

-William Hunter
Quoted in  J  A Paris  A  Treatise on Diet (1824), epigraph, from a note made by Hunter on one of his lectures.