A handy book on food and diet, in health and disease.

  • Cameron, Charles A.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handy book on food and diet, in health and disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    matter the heat and light under the influence of which the change had been eflfected become stored up in the vegetable matter. In this way we account for the fact that when wood is burned we obtain light and heat; and it explains how it is that combustion of coal (which is partly decayed vegetable matter) supplies the force by means of which the huge loco- motive is impelled with almost lightning speed. As animals are obliged to roam about in quest of food, and as the tem- perature of their bodies must be kept up to about 100 deg. Fahrenheit, no matter how cold the air is, we see how necessary it is that they should be well supplied with heat and motive power. Food is not alone used for the purpose of forming and repairing the animal body—it is also intended to supply it with heat and with motive power. CHAPTEK II. PEOXIMATE CONSTITUENTS OF FOOD, We have seen that the elementary constituents of food are but very few in number: the same simplicity prevails with respect to its more important proxiate ingredients. If we except the substances which confer flavour and odour upon food, and which exist in minute quantities, our ordinary nutriment is made up of but very few distinct substances. If we exclude water—which constitutes from 5 to 94 per cent, of the weight of different kinds of food—the most abundant nutritive material is starch. This body consists of somewhat flattened ovate grains, which in most plants are marked by a series of concentric rings. They vary in size from thy 200th to the 3,500th part of an inch in diameter, accord-