Food and the principles of dietetics / by Robert Hutchison.

  • Hutchison, Robert, Sir, 1871-1960.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Food and the principles of dietetics / by Robert Hutchison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    completely absorbed.^ There are, thus, no chemical considerations which can outweigh the natural repugnance which most persons feel to the eating of blood; and though it may be used without harm, if also without much benefit, in the form of black-puddings and such- like, there is no reason to advocate its habitual consumption, much less its employment in the feeding of the sick ; and this is true also of the use of blood as a source of iron.^ The lungs, from the fact that the air which they contain enables them to float in water, are popularly spoken of as the ‘ lights.’ They are sometimes eaten, but cannot be regarded as a really good form of food. Their chemical composition furnishes the reason. The lungs are largely composed of an elastic material belonging to the group of albuminoids, and only imperfectly capable of digestion, besides being useless as building matter in the body. Under the term sweetbread butchers include at least two distinct organs. The ‘ throat sweetbread ’ is known to anatomists as the thymus gland ; the ‘ stomach sweetbread ’ is the pancreas. The thymus of the calf is the one most frequently met with in the market. Both glands are cellular organs, held together by a loose and delicate connective tissue. From the nature of the latter they are easily dissolved in the stomach, and rank amongst the most digestible of animal foods, 9 ounces of sweetbread being completely disposed of by a healthy stomach in two and three-quarter hours, while a similar weight of beefsteak demands at least four and a half hours for its complete digestion.® The cells of these organs are chiefly composed of nucleo-proteid, and for that reason, as has already been pointed out in the case of the liver and kidney, sweet- breads may prove harmful in some cases of gout. Tripe is the name applied to the stomach and intestines of the ox after being cleaned and boiled. It contains a large amount of connective tissue, readily changed into gelatin on boiling, and so rendering the fibres easily digested. It contains fat in considerable amount, but not diffused through the muscular part. I am not acquainted with any experiments on its rate of digestion in the stomach, but in the intestine it has been found to be as completely * See Gherardini, Jfev. des Sciences Med., 1892, xxxix. 88; and Robert, St. Petersburger Med. Wochenschrift, 1891, p. 439. Halliburton has investigated-(J5n7. Med, Journ., igo^, \. 823) the digestibility and absorption of hjemoglobin. He found that it is to some extent at least digested by the pancreatic juice, and experiments on rats showed that under its administration the number of red cells in the blood rises, whilst the amount of iron in the tissues is increased. * See Starck, Med. lyoc/i., 1898, xxiv. 805. * Penzoldt, D'nit. Archiv fur Klin. Med., 1893, li. 535.