Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet.

  • Bennet, James Henry, 1816-1891.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    28/298 (page 8)
    s continue to create it incessantly as long as life lasts, ceasing their operation with life only. It was long supposed that carbonaceous food was all but entirely employed or burnt in the generation of heat, and that force was derived in the animal economy all but exclusively from the assimilation of nitrogenous food, or sooner from that of the nitro- genous element in food, animal or vegetable. This was Liebig's theory, and his authority long over- powered all opposition or doubts. During the last few years this point has been investigated by several eminent physiologists, amongst whom I may name E. Smith, Professor Haughton, Dr. Frankland, Professor Fick, and Wislicenus of Zurich. They have endeavoured to arrive at a clearer and more exact idea than we had before of the origin of the power given out or spent by animated beings. These experiments have been carried out under the influence of modern views respecting the corre- lation of physical forces, and the doctrine of the conservation of force and of the equivalency of heat and of mechanical force. They appear to have satisfactorily established that the production of the muscular power spent by animals and man is not so much to be attributed to the assimilation of nitro- genous food as to the slow combustion of carbon- aceous food. According to this view the formation of animal heat by the combustion of carbon, and the final assimilation and nutrition processes gene-