134 State Horticultural Society. 



essary upon which to build the flesh and blood of the body, and besides^ 

 if the truth be known they are dry only in appearance — every bone in 

 the human body has its blood and nutrition bearing tissues, so do the 

 dry bones of terms in chemical study contained concealed all the nutri- 

 tion of the ages. It is for us to go a little below the surface and bring 

 this light. Our knowledge may not be great of proteids and carbo- 

 hydrates, but we have come to know certain things by the old fashioned 

 names farinaceous and starchy foods, saccharin or sugars, fats, etc., and 

 we are now to apply new names to the old compounds, that we may the 

 better trace their scientific relations and uses. 



First then let us see for what purpose the body needs food, that we 

 may understand the better how to supph^ the demand. There may be 

 some who if asked why we eat would reply "to live," but to go deeper, 

 one may ask "upon what does living depend?" and find that we are at 

 one step beyond our depth^ — for it seems to depend upon ever varying 

 conditions. Of one thing, however we are sure, it depends upon a uni- 

 form necessary degree of heat. Winter or summer the temperature of 

 the human body must be sustained at ninety-eight degrees or we die. It 

 may, and often does, for weeks and months run higher than this, but it 

 must not be lowered. The tissues mav decav, the bodv waste to a skele- 

 ton and life be maintained, but there comes a point, when if the heat- 

 producing element be not supplied, the fuel within exhausts itself and 

 life ceases. Fire dies in the stove from the lack of fuel, and the process, 

 called chemicallv, combustion, must cease. Bodv combustion is not 

 different from the combustion in our stoves, except that the union of 

 elements takes place in the body individually in cells while oxygen and 

 carbonaceous material in the stove is a concentrated union producing 

 visible light and more or less intense heat. 



Here then is our first necessity — heat producing fuel food. "When 

 we build fires we open our drafts, giving abundance of oxygen, a process 

 which is equally necessary to the body. The one point which parents, 

 nurses, even doctors are apt to forget — inquiry is made if baby took hi? 

 food in full measure, but to inquire if baby took the fresh oxygenated 

 air which is necessary for the food's combustion would be what — foolish, 

 unnecessary. Does it go without saying that this oxygen is every where 

 present and of course baby has it? By no means, for the atmosphere 



