FOREIGN AGENCIES: LONDON-S. C. NALEY, MANAGER, 139-143 OXFORD STREET, W. PARIS-ADRIEN DE LA HAYE & EMILE LE CROSNIER, 23 PLACE DE L'ECOLE DE MEDECINE. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA-OCEANIC PUBLISHING COMPANY, 191 CLARENCE STREET. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. FOOD AND ITs digestion. BY WILLIAM B. DEWEES, A.M., M.D., OF SALINA, KANSAS. True it is, quoth the belly, That I receive the general food at first, Even to the Court, the heart-to the seat o' the brain; SHAKESPEARE: Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 1. No. I. prepares new materials to supply the waste of the old, and these the beneficent hand of Nature has plentifully diffused over every part of the globe. Lest he should neglect them, he is furnished with faithful sentinels which seldom fail to admonish him of the exigencies. of the system, and his life would be endangered were those admonitions but feeble and temporary. Thus we have hunger and thirst, the strongest and most impatient of all sensations, and the gratification of them is accompanied by the most exquisite bodily comfort. The substances which gratify those impatient sensations, by supplying this waste and growth of the system and the changes they undergo IPPOCRATES asserted that "accurate previous to their entering the circulatory mass observation of facts, and correct gen--the blood-may be properly denominated eralization from them, forms the only rational as the nutrients and their digestion. basis of medicine," and so we are taught today. H Man is endowed with motion, sensation, and thought These are dependent on some internal or inherent principle and also on va rious external agents, all of which, being in their normal relation and action, constitute perfect animal life. When we contemplate this life we are confronted, first and foremost, with its principal characteristic, viz.: motion; and when we take a further view we must perceive the selfevident manifestation that this motion and its laws must necessarily tend to waste the machine in which they reside. It becomes essential, therefore, to the exist ence of the living body of man that he be provided with the necessary means to counteract his tendency to decay. To effect this, he is furnished with an apparatus which NUTRIENTS SUBSTANCES USED AS FOOD. By the nutrients, or substances used as food, are meant such substances as, taken into the system, are suited to supply its growth and the waste of its solid and fluid parts. The articles taken as aliment by man comprehend an immense variety of substances in the organic and inorganic kingdoms-chiefly animals and vegetables in the organic, and water, air, and light in the inorganic. It has been, however, a disputed question whether his natural food be confined to animals or vegetables, or whether he be carnivorous or phytivorous. The assertion laid down by Dr. Cullen was "That all animal matter is derived from a vegetable origin, because all animals feed directly or entirely on vegetables or upon other animals that do so; hence the principle of nutrientia refers to vegetables." |