Sciences in 1825, and was inserted the same year in Magendie's Journal 

 of Physiology. It was at the same time, during his winter residence in 

 Eome, Florence, and Naples, that he began his experimental researches 

 on inanition, a work to which he consecrated several years of diligent 

 labor. 



In 1828, Cbossat, leaving Italy, returned to establish himself perma- 

 nently in Geneva, where he was married ; from that period he divided his 

 time between the duties of his practice and his scientific labors. Eesum- 

 ing his studies, and pursuing them with indefatigable perseverance, 

 he presented in 1838, to the Academy of Sciences, his researches " On 

 inanition'''' — a work remarkable from the importance of the results 

 obtained and the influence it soon exer^cised on the dietetics of acute 

 diseases. A short time after, this memoir gained the prize for experi- 

 mental physiology, which won for its author, from the year 184G, the 

 title of corresponding member of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, 

 and in 1865 the cross of the Legion of Honor. In this work, Chossat col- 

 lected and grouped the results of his researches, some of which had 

 already been stated in se%'eral notes addressed to the Academy of Sci- 

 ences. He studied the influence of the deprivation of aliment in gen- 

 eral, and showed that an animal dies when it has lost, on an average, 

 0.4 of its initial weight. With warm-blooded animals, the integral loss 

 seems to be independent of the class to which the subject under experi- 

 ment belongs, as well as of the normal weight of its species. This 

 average figure of 0.4 for the adult animal varies, however, in its already 

 quite extended limits, according to the strength, age, and obesity of the 

 subject. With a very fat animal, the loss might be increased to 0.5, 

 while with the young it can scarcely exceed 0.2. The author also very 

 carefully studied the diminution of temperature caused by inanition. 

 These data are of essential importance in the treatment" of diseases, by 

 showing the injurious influence of too restricted a diet. 



Chossat then studied the influence of the deprivation of nitrogenous 

 food by subjecting animals to an exclusively sugar diet, as well as the 

 influence on the skeleton of mineral inanition, or of the deprivation of 

 saline substances. 



It is impossible to give here even an incomplete summary of an au- 

 thoritative work, justly become classic, and one of the chief sources of 

 Chossat's fame. In this work, as in all his other researches, Chossat 

 distinguishes himself by a remarkable scientific conscientiousness, a 

 minute exactness in his experiments, and a careful and truthful analy- 

 sis of facts. The author excludes every doubtful fact ; and it is only 

 after convincing himself of his accuracy by new researches that he draws 

 conclusions. " In brief," said Chossat, and it is in this way he ends his 

 memoir, '•'' inanitiation* is a cause of death, which marches silently and 



*See on the subject oUnaniUaUon the following note, p. 9 of the memoir: "I find 

 myself regretfully obliged to invent a new term, though according to grammatical 

 analogy, to express the gradual passage of the body to a state which is only really inani- 

 tion at irs close. Inanition is, correctly speaking, but the end of iuanitiation." 



