On the digestive ferments and the preparation and use of artificially digested food : being the Lumleian lectures for the year 1880, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians / by Wm. Roberts.

Date:
1880
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the digestive ferments and the preparation and use of artificially digested food : being the Lumleian lectures for the year 1880, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians / by Wm. Roberts. 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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    tion. Direct observations on tlie nutritive value of peptones have, however, shown this paradoxical view to be untenable. As the point is one of importance, I will endeavour to lay before you the proofs which have been already adduced of the food-value of peptones, and I will supplement these by some observations made by myself P. Plosz* was the first to put this question to the test of direct experiment. He fed a puppy dog weighing 1,302 grams with an artificial compound made of fat and sugar, in imitation of milk, but in which the casein was replaced by artificially digested fibrin. In the course of eighteen days of this diet the dog grew and increased 501 grams in weight. E. Maly** performed a similar experiment on a pigeon. He first fed the pigeon for several days on a regulated quantity of wheat until he had ascer- tained the quantity requisite to keep the bird in a state of nutritive equilibrium, in which it neither gained nor lost weight. He then made an artificial corn from starch, fat, gum, salts, and water, but in which the gluten was replaced by fibrin-peptone, and fed the pigeon on the same quantity of this artificial corn as he had before given of the natural corn. Under this novel diet the bird, after a short apprenticeship, not only maintained its weight, but actually put on flesh. This experiment seemed to show that peptone was even superior to natural gluten as a nutriment. *Pfluger'8 Archiv. f. d. ges. Physologie: 1874, p. 323, **Ibicl, p. 585. G