692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



warms him like whisky and keeps off the rheumatiz." I have again 

 and again felt myself benefited by taking buttermilk by returning 

 to what was a common practice in the district in which I spent my 

 boyhood. And, certainly, I find it difficult to turn a deaf ear to all 

 that I have heard in praise of the whey-cure in Switzerland and else- 

 where by those who have tried it for dyspepsia and rheumatism. 



M. I was led to recommend sour buttermilk or sour whey by re- 

 flecting on the very facts to which you refer. 



C. What about the fattening effects of starch and sugar and other 

 carbo-hydrates ? Are these substances convertible into fat ? 



M. Possibly nay, probably. At the same time I am disposed to 

 think that in many cases the apparent transformation into fat is to be 

 accounted for by the storing up in the system of the fatty and oily 

 materials of the food that these materials may remain behind by be- 

 ing, perhaps, less combustible than the lactic acid into which amyla- 

 ceous and saccharine substances are naturally transformed. 



C. You have still a word to say in justification of your preference 

 for your gelatinous galantine. 



M. The nitrogenous alimentary substances are divided into pro- 

 teine compounds and non-proteine compounds. The former (the al- 

 buminous group) albumen, fibrine, caseine and their varieties, yield 

 proteine when treated by heat and an alkali ; the latter (the gelati- 

 nous group) containing gelatine and chondrine gelatine prepared from 

 bone and structures containing fibrous tissue, chondrine prepared from 

 cartilage does not yield proteine when so treated. Proteine is looked 

 upon as the base or radical of the albuminous group ; but it may only 

 be an occasional chemical product. In any case it does not do to sup- 

 pose that the non-proteine compounds forming the gelatinous group 

 are useless as articles of food. The proteine and the non-proteine com- 

 pounds are all reduced to albuminose.in the process of digestion, and 

 resolved afterward in the same way into urea and the residual force- 

 producing compounds which in all probability is amyloid substance or 

 glycogen. An animal soon dies if it be fed solely on gelatine ; and so 

 it does also if it be fed solely on albumen, or fibrine, or starch, or 

 sugar, or oily matter. The different elements of food, animal or vege- 

 table, must be mixed in certain proportions, which are not yet very 

 clearly made out, before an omnivorous animal can thrive upon them. 

 There may be no occasion to take gelatine as food, for gelatine and 

 chondrine are certainly formed in the system from any kind of albu- 

 minose ; there can not well be any harm in taking it, for, as I have 

 said, it is transformed into albuminose like any other form of nitroge- 

 nous substance ; and there may be great good in taking it, for the 

 coatings of the cells and fibers of muscle and nerve are made up of a 

 structure like elastic tissue, which yields gelatine in abundance. In- 

 deed, the popular notion that there is something specially strengthen- 

 ing in jelly may not be altogether a fallacy. I can easily believe that 



