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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    potentials in redox potentials fall and rise. The rise is described as “ becoming more negative,” the fall as “ becoming more positive.” Working capacity increases with negativity and lessens with its decline. As the constructive processes taking place in plants through light absorption are to a large extent processes of reduction, they naturally lead to the formation of strong redox potentials, figuratively speaking to high chemical temperatures. These are the forces of energy or poten- tials which are peculiar to “ natural fresh ” plant organs including those which are suitable for human food. With the transformation of one form of energy into another, factors of intensity are also transferred. The temperature of a source of light is transferred to the intensity of the light radiated which can be defined by the spectrum. The intensity of the quant-jump of valence electrons (chemical energy) passes into the frequency of the light quant thereby emitted, and vice versa. In absorbing the electrons a given light quant can only raise its frequency to a corresponding level of energy. Hence it may be stated that the intensity of the form of energy resulting from transformation cannot be higher than the intensity of that form of energy the transforma- tion of which produced it. But if work is performed at the transformation, the intensity, the potential of the new form of energy resulting will decrease corres- pondingly. Here we must recall what was said above about natural or positive processes and those which are unnatural or negative. The reduction processes occurring in the plant are unnatural or negative processes, which can only take place accompanied by positive processes, in this case by absorption of the energy of light. The