Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/896 (page 13)
    FOOD AND DRINK. By Dr J. A. RUSSELL, On the evening of Saturday, the 27th November 1880, Dr J. A. Russell delivered the Second of the Lectures on Health, in the Watt Institute, his subject being Food and Drink. He said:— The subject of Food and Drink is one so large, that in a single Lecture I can only hope to give a few leading facts, and to enunciate some principles which may explain those facts, and other facts with which you may be acquainted. Food is required for three chief purposes:—firstly, to replace the losses continually taking place from the body; secondly, to maintain the animal heat, or in other words, to supply warmth—our clothes are only for the purpose of keeping that heat in, and it is from our food that the heat itself is derived; and, thirdly, to supply force for performing work. A man is found to require from one-twenty-sixth to one-twentieth of his weight in solid and liquid food in twenty-four hours, or x^-g-th part of his weight of water-free solids, and by this term is meant solid food, after the proportion of water contained in it has been deducted. On examining the following table, giving the composition of different kinds of solid food, it will be seen that the majority of them contain much water. If you look, for instance, at even such a dry food as cheese, you will see that it consists of more than one-third of its weight of water.