Lectures on digestion and diet.

  • Thackrah, Charles Turner, 1795-1833.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on digestion and diet. 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.

    102/170 (page 94)
    The subject of Cooking must not be wholly over- looked in a Lecture on Diet. Man has been termed a “ cooking animal.” The practice, indeed, is peculiar to our species. May it not be considered a substitute for the agency of that glandular apparatus, which the stomachs of brutes so generally possess ? The human stomach, indeed, was represented in the last Lecture with minute excavations, numerous as the cells of a honey-comb; but these Follicles must be far less power- ful, than the glands of many birds and animals, which take similar food. Man may be supported on the same substances which feed a Fowl or a Rat. He has a simpler apparatus, but the faculty of cooking is an ade- quate compensation. Cooking is chiefly useful in eliminating noxious principles, and rendering the food pervious to the digesting fluids. Of both these opera- tions, the treatment of the potato affords a fami- liar example. You are aware that this plant, in common with others of the genus Solanum, is poi- sonous. The herb is decidedly deleterious; and the root, if eaten raw, would considerably disorder the human stomach. In its natural state, moreover, its compact texture would prevent the full digestive operation. Both these evils are removed by cooking. Heat dissi- pates the narcotic principle; and renders the potato mealy,—easy to comminute, and ready to absorb the animal juices. Cooking seems especially neces- sary for vegetables. Farina, the chief nutritious con- stituent of this class, in cold solution forms a viscous fluid, but is coagulated by heat. A tenacious fluid