Good health by careful living, or, How to cure and how to prevent our every-day ailments : dyspepsia-diarrhea-biliousness-weakness-headache-neualgia-constipation-nervousness-&c., &c / by W.W. Hall.
- Date:
- 1893
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Good health by careful living, or, How to cure and how to prevent our every-day ailments : dyspepsia-diarrhea-biliousness-weakness-headache-neualgia-constipation-nervousness-&c., &c / by W.W. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![the simple original elements, carbon, the more familiar representative of which is charcoal. Carbon or charcoal burned before our eyes gives out heat; when taken into the system in the form of food, it undergoes a process of burning there also, and throws out a warmth which, diffused over the body, is called vital heat. The amount of such heat necessary to the health of a good-sized man, and which is de- veloped from the food eaten in twenty-four hours, would heat twenty gallons of ice-cold water to a boil, or from thirty-two degrees to two hundred and twelve, WE EAT TO KEEP WARM. Sugars, starches, and oils are the more concen- trated forms of carbonaceous food, some of them having scarcely anything left after all the carbon has been withdrawn. And, as if to compel helpless infancy and feeble age to use the means necessary to keep the body warm enough to hve. Providence has given to childhood an almost insatiable desire for sweets ; and without the element of sweetness in its food, the healthiest born infant would die in less than a month. In vain would it nestle in its mother's bosom, in vain its exposure to the warming sunshine, and in vain the softest blankets and the finest furs encase its body; for the warmth which sustains human life must come from within—must be gene- ]'ated by the internal combustion of the carbonaceous elements of eaten food. As we turn the downhill of life, we begin to grow](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21904510_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
