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53 
FOOD AND ALIMENTATION. 
L. COYTKUX PREVOST, M.D. 
Read January igih, i8g^. 
I most sincerely thank the officers of this Association for having 
conferred upon me the honour of reading a paper before the " Field 
Naturalist's Club," which possesses, among its members, names already 
illustrious. 
I am happy to have the opportunity of contribu ing, as far as my 
feeble means permit, to the achievement of its aim, which is intellectual 
progress and advancement of science. 
The physician, gentlemen, has another lole to play on enrth besides 
relieving or curing the evils that afflict our pour humanity. His duty, 
above all, must be to ward off diseases, in pointing out t heir causes and 
the best means of avoiding them. 
These causes, alas ! are manifold. They accompany man from the 
cradle to the tomb ; they surround him at his birth, escort him all his 
life, being for him a perpetual threatening. But the most common, 
undoubtedly, are those which arise from some disorders of the digestive 
system. 
It is by the digestive tube that life enters our body, and by the 
digestive tube also that enters death. 
The intestines and the stomach can be considered as true laboratories 
where the most deadly poisons are incessantly produced. Nature, it is 
true, has provided us with powerful means of defence, but, some day, 
the foes will swarm and overcome the barriers opposed to them by 
physiological laws ; disease then is constituted with all its sufferings 
and dangers. 
These disorders, in the greatest majority of cases, are owing to 
ignorance or contempt of the laws of hygiene. It is, therefore, our duty 
to teach these laws and point out their importance. 
In preparing this paper, gentlemen, I dreamt a moment of trying 
to dazzle you with the depth of my science. I had almost made up my 
mind to enter into transcendent considerations upon the physiological 
machinery ofjiutritive phenomena, penetrating the essence itself of the 
