Experiments and observations on the gastric juice, and the physiology of digestion / By William Beaumont.

  • Beaumont, William, 1785-1853.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments and observations on the gastric juice, and the physiology of digestion / By William Beaumont. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    one, would be excess in another. With labouring persons, much of the excess 1s carried off by per- spiration; and probably a great deal of nervous en- ergy is wasted by laborious occupations, which re- quires to be replenished by the nutrient principles of aliment. This is a subject, however, on which we can only offer conjecture; for it is difficult to ar- gue on a point of which we know so little. Young people who are growing, require more nutriment in proportion to their size, than those who have arrived at adult age. The quality of nutriment is a matter of consid- erable importance in dietetic regulations. Bulk is, perhaps, nearly as necessary to the articles of diet as the nutrient principle. ‘They should be so managed that one should be in proportion to the other. Too highly nutritive diet is probably as fatal to the pro- longation of life and health, as that which contains — an insufficient quantity ofnutriment. It has been as- » certained that carnivorous animals will not live on highly concentrated food alone. Dogs fed on oil or sugar, which are both converted by the digestive organs almost entirely into chyle, are found to be- come diseased, and dic ina few weeks. ‘The infer- ence drawn by Paris,* that it merely “ proves that an animal cannot be supported on highly concentrated aliment alone,” no doubt, is a correct one; though opposed to the opinion of Magendie, the author of the experiments, who infers that death proceeds from the want of azote in these articles of diet, and that life cannot be supported ca non-azotized aliment. * Puris On Diet, » 72,