238 — MEALS MEDICINAL. 
soluble by the saliva, being then known as dextrine; also 
cellulose, the basis of vegetable structures. Starch, and the 
sugars, are almost completely digested by a healthy person, and 
are sucked up into the blood nearly to the last particle ; it being 
at the same time an important circumstance that a relatively 
larger amount of primary food-constituents is excreted by the 
bowels on a vegetable than on an animal diet. ‘“ Why these 
primary constituents of vegetable foods should be so much less 
completely absorbed than the other ingredients is difficult to say.” 
Human saliva is peculiarly rich in the ferment (diastase) which 
changes insoluble starches of foods into soluble dextrine, being 
richer apparently than the saliva of any other animal. The 
human stomach and the human brain are justly said to be the 
only analysts which never make mistakes. 
It is on material food, comprising the particular constituents 
now discussed, reliance must be placed for supplying vital energy, 
and bodily health ; nitrogen as primary nourishment, and carbon 
as fuel, being the chief elements. Nitrogen enters the body 
as such, and leaves it as waste urea; carbon enters the body 
as fat, starch, and sugar, leaving it in carbon dioxide. Gain 
or loss of nitrogen signifies gain or loss of flesh-tissues, whilst 
gain or loss of carbon signifies gain or loss of fatty deposits, and 
of bodily warmth. In dealing with weak or impaired digestions 
the cook can render valuable aid by carrying out as regards the 
food one or other of three distinct processes; each of these serves 
to commence the digestion of food by culinary skill before it 
is given to the invalid, so that the digestive powers are 
thus considerably economized: First, by malting, or pre- 
digesting the starches; secondly, by mixing with the meat 
foods and albuminoids some pepsin, or such ferment as converts 
these foods into soluble peptones; and, thirdly, by making an 
emulsion with sweetbread-juice of the fatty food which has to 
be digested alter leaving the stomach, whilst within the first 
bowels. 
*““ We may live without poetry, music, or art, 
We may live without conscience, and live without heart, 
We may live without friends, we may live without books : 
_ {But civilized man cannot live without cooks.” 
Witty Mr. Punch has lately anticipated the substitution of 
clean, clever electricity for cooking, in place of black, smutty, 
. Ba clumsy kitchen coal, with its dust, and its difficulties of transport. 
