The essential nature and organisation of food energy and the application of the second principle of thermo-dynamics to food value and its active force / by M. Bircher-Benner ; translated by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer.

  • Bircher-Benner, Max Oskar, 1867-1939.
Date:
1939
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The essential nature and organisation of food energy and the application of the second principle of thermo-dynamics to food value and its active force / by M. Bircher-Benner ; translated by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Anything that concerns spirit, soul, and body, belongs to the physician’s sphere of interest. No fraction of this can be understood save in connection with the whole. Down to the smallest details everything human is recipro- cally permeated with body, soul, and spirit. Only in so far as we are able to discern all three aspects is under- standing possible. But this faculty is limited, it easily goes astray. Wherefore Henry Bergson says: “ Intellect is characterised by its natural lack of understanding for life.” Our knowledge of life is a priori destined to remain fragmentary. But even a fragment is valuable knowledge if unremitting endeavour makes use of it as part of a vital whole. It is in this sense that the following pages are frag- mentary, although they are significant for life, nutrition, and health: they treat of nutritional energy, its nature and organisation, and the validity of the second principle of thermodynamics or Carnot-Clausius’ principle in the nutritional process. I. - THE ESSENTIAL NATURE AND ORGANISATION OF FOOD ENERGY » Energy, like mass, is a fundamental phenomenon of the world so far as we know it. According to modern physics energy equals mass. This equalisation is based on the results of research work, on the construction of atoms, physics of atoms, and wave mechanics. Atoms which formerly were thought to be indivisible, in the light of the new theory prove to be a system composed of protones and electrons; the proton is the electro- positive, the electron the negative charge of unity. The