333 



sometimes takes place, accompanied with unusual and seemingly 

 wonderful phenomena ; and many minds, not content with the simple 

 facts observed, have pushed them into absurdities of an exciting 

 character, which, in their practical operation, have led to great evil, 

 the corruption of morals, the peopling of Insane Asylums, and some- 

 times even to suicide. A closer scrutiny limits the observed wonders 

 within the ordinary recognized course of nature ; and a better philo- 

 sophical habit of thought would have obviated all the mischief. 



It was found, upon feeding dogs exclusively on gelatin, that life 

 could not be supported by this principle ; and the inference was 

 drawn that gelatin is not nutritious, and that all our notions relative 

 to the nutritive properties of calf's-foot jelly, and the usefulness of 

 soup societies, were based upon a great error of fact. Further ex- 

 periments have shown that there is scarcely a single proximate 

 organic principle which is capable of maintaining life, when used 

 exclusively as food ; and that it is by the combination of such prin- 

 ciples that nutrition is eifected. The same remark applies to all 

 those hasty conclusions, which, from the result of one or a few ex- 

 periments, would exclude from the category of nutritive food, many 

 other substances which have always formed a part of the habitual 

 diet of man. 



It is well known that many chemists, founding their opinions upon 

 similar partial observations, maintain that starch and other analogous 

 substances do not nourish the system, but are useful simply by gene- 

 rating heat, through their oxidation or combustion in the body. The 

 necessary conclusion is, that all physicians have labored under an 

 egregious error, when they have used starch in the form of barley- 

 water, rice-water, arrow-root, tapioca, sago, &c., for the support of the 

 sick and feeble, and must surrender the experience of their profes- 

 sional lives and that of ages before them, to these presumed results 

 of scientific induction. But they who reason thus do not sufficiently 

 consider that, in certain hot climates, where the habitual temperature 

 is often above that of the human body, and where the great struggle 

 is to keep cool enough, millions upon millions of people live mainly 

 on rice or sago, the former of which consists chiefly of starch, and the 

 latter is pure starch. It is inconceivable that the prominent article 

 of diet of such numbers, persons too in good health, and often of 

 great powers of enduring fatigue, should consist of a substance having 

 no nutritive power, and fitted only for generating animal heat, which, 

 under the circumstances, is not needed, and is, indeed, often in 

 excess. 



