itIlLIBRARY 



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MONDAY AFTERNOON LECTURES. Nos. 7 & 8. 9 



The Chemistry of Food. 



By Frank T. Shutt, M.A., F.C.S., F.I.C. 



(Two Lectures delivered Feb. 2jrd, and March 2nd, l8gi.) 



He, indeed, would be an unreflecting and unthankful individual 

 who would not be willing to adn:iit that the higher civilization of later 

 times has given us great and innumerable blessings. We might, per- 

 chance, find such an one among those who have grown up amid the 

 comforts and luxuries of wealthy modern life, an unconscious re- 

 cipient of good things and ignorant of the life of our forefathers ; or 

 among those who, from long-continued poverty or degradation, can 

 hardly he said to enjoy those blessings. To recount the triumphs of 

 science and enterprise — not to speak of other and not less important 

 factors of our civilization — during the last fifty years would be a 

 more than Herculean task. Triumphs of the Natural and Applied 

 Sciences — great triumphs in the art of healing and no less great in 

 electricity, and mechanics, and agriculture, and a host of sister sciences 

 — triumphs that have added to our comforts and have alleviated our 

 sufferings, attend and surround us on every side. 



But yet, while confessing all this with ready lips, a moment's serious 

 reflection tells us that there is scarcely a blessing without its concomi- 

 tant evil — an evil too often the result of the abuse of the blessing. 

 Evils whose origins may easily be traced to the wrong or excessive use 

 of things in themselves good and wholesome, pervade all ranks of 

 society. It is only when we view exclusively this side of the picture — 

 as too many of us occasionally do — that we are apt to conclude tha^- 

 our boasting of the achievements of the nineteenth century and the 

 so-called betterment of the ^ace, is worse than vain. 



But whit has all this to do with the subject under discussion — the 

 chemistry of food? A litde careful thought may show us the applica- 

 bility of these remarks as an introduction to a lecture on such an 

 im )ortant matter as food ; for although my title might be considered, 

 strictly speaking, to confine me to the composition of foods, I propose 

 to incorporate with the chemistry somewhat of the physiology of food. 



