Presidential address on the energy of the animal body / by W.F. Cleveland.

  • Cleveland, William Frederick, 1823-1898.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Presidential address on the energy of the animal body / by W.F. Cleveland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    mechanisms, we recognise how, in violent exercise, the blood must be robbed of oxygen and loaded with carbonic acid; how, to meet this changed condition, there must be increased activity of the respiratory centi’e, and as a consequence in- creased energy of the respiratory movements ; how these are accompanied by increased cardiac activity, and a swifter or fuller stream of blood through the lungs. I say we cannot see these changes occur without admitting the necessity for there being such an efficient condition of the heart and lungs as would ensure the concerted action required for the work to be done by the muscles. At the commencement of these remarks I referred to the expenditure of potential energy for the purpose of acquiring fresh energy, as shown in the infant sucking at the breast, and how essential it was for the performance of the labour of life, which is involved in breathing, that this renewal of energy should be maintained. Permit me to mention a case which is of not uncommon occurrence. Last year I was called to see an infant, twelve days old, which, although con- sidered healthy at birth, had been troubledwith constipation. It had been circumcised on the eighth day, and on the tenth there was diarrhoea, and a strophulous rash on the skin. Two days after the child evidently was fast running down ; its face was pinched, it was exceedingly weak, and passing eleven or twelve chopped-spinach stools in the twenty-four hours. It had been fed on humanised cow’s milk, with a few drops of brandy ; but, as no improvement had taken place on the following day, a healthy wet nurse was obtained. It was now thought the difficulty, as is frequently the case, had been surmounted; but not so. The child had become too weak to suck, it could not grasp the nipple. Its stock of potential energy was practically gone. The respiration must, ere long, cease unless the child’s energy could be renewed. How is this to be effected P Only by the conveyance of appropriate food in some way to the digestive tissues or those servants which wait upon the muscles and nerves to enable them to furnish the energy required. Some of the breast milk, to which a few drops of brandy were occasionally added, was from time to time cautiously poured down the child’s throat, and, in twenty-four hours, the improvement was marked, the rash soon disappeared, and in the course of a week the child was visibly filling out, and looking plump and healthy. We must not forget that food supply, necessary as we have just seen it to be for carrying on life, is equalled in importance by those organs being in a good working condition, whose duty it is to eliminate the waste products of metabolism. It is not easy to follow the food, closely, from its entrance into the body to what is eliminated of it as waste products, but it may be said in general terms that the proteids, fats, carbo-hydrates, together with salts and water, which compose our food, leave the body as waste products, under the form of urea, carbonic acid, salts and water, and that the principal channels by which this most important process is carried out are the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys. “ The lungs serve as the channel for the discharge of the greater part of the carbonic acid and a considerable quantity of water. Through the skin there leave the body a compara- tively small quantity of salts, a little carbonic acid, and a variable but on the whole large quantity of water. The kidneys discharge all or nearly all the urea and allied bodies,