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A treatise on food and diet: with observations on the dietetical regimen suited for disordered states of the digestive organs; and an account of the dietaries of some of the principal metropolitan and other establishments for paupers, lunatics, criminals, children, the sick, etc / [Jonathan Pereira].

  • Pereira, Jonathan, 1804-1853.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on food and diet: with observations on the dietetical regimen suited for disordered states of the digestive organs; and an account of the dietaries of some of the principal metropolitan and other establishments for paupers, lunatics, criminals, children, the sick, etc / [Jonathan Pereira]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/602 (page 4)
    Though I have included Copper as an element of organised bodies, in consequence of its having been found in them by several chemists *, it is, probably, only an accidental constituent. Gold t, and, more recently, Lead { and Arsenicum §, have been declared: to be constituents of organised bodies ; but there is reason, I think, to suspect some error in the observa- tions. A living body has no power of forming elements, or of converting one elementary substance into another || ; burgh, for 1841); but the assertion has not been corroborated by sub- sequent experiments. . * Copper has been detected in plants by Bischoff (De Candolle, Physiologie Végétale, t. 1. p. 389), Meissner (Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. t. iv. p. 106), and by Sarzeau (Ann, de Chim. et de Phys. t. xlix. p. 334). The last mentioned chemist also found it in the blood of animals. +. Several distinguished chemists have asserted the existence of gold in vegetables (Chaptal, Elements of Chemistry, vol. 11. p. 442). t+ According to Devergie (Journal de Chimie Médicale, t. iv. 2°° Série, p.-591, 1838), lead and copper are constituents of the bodies of man and other animals. § Orfila (Journ. de Chim. Méd. t. v. 2° Sér. p. 632, 1839) asserts, that arsenicum is a constituent of the bones of man and other animals. But Dr. G. O. Rees (Guy’s Hospital Reports, No. xii.), Messrs. Danger and Flandrin, and the Commissioners appointed by the French Academy of Sciences (Journal de Pharmacie, t. xxiv. p. 428, Juillet, 1841), have repeated his experiments without detecting it. || Dr. Prout (Phil. Trans. 1822, p. 377) asserts, that the lime found in the skeleton of the chick when it quits the shell, did not pre-exist in the recent egg; so that the only possible sources whence it could be derived are the shell and transmutation from other substances sup- posed to be elementary. But as the membrane in contact with the shell is never vascular, and as both the albumen and yolk contain, at the end of incubation, a considerable quantity of earthy matter, which it is to be supposed would have been appropriated to the bone in pre- ference to that derived from a remote source, Dr. Prout doubts whether the origin or source of the lime is referable to the shell. Indeed, it is tolerably clear, that he believes in the capability of the vital energies -to effect the transmutation of some of the so-called elements; and