Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1515/en

The merely anatomical-functional consideration of the peritoneum sheds little light on its deeper significance. One notes a strong innervation, a film of moisture enabling the gliding of the organs within the abdominal and pelvic cavity — in particular the coiled mass of the small intestine — and the astonishingly high capacity for resorption of bodily fluid; together with the lymph and the lymph nodes it provides for detoxification — in the sense of a kind of digestion — of substances foreign to the body. This mode of consideration, confining itself to the more outward facts, immediately broadens when one asks after the significance of the strong innervation. An answer is given by the peritoneum itself. It is a sense organ, directed toward what accomplishes itself within the individual organs of this inner space in highly specific activities — and which simultaneously grasps the sum of these activities in unconsciousness as a whole and, proceeding from this whole, coordinates the organ activities and attunes them one to another.