ADDRESS ON THE RELATION OF FOOD TO WORK, AND ITS BEARING ON 



MEDICAL PRACTICE. 



By Rev. Sa:mufx Haughtox, of Dublin. 



Me. President and Gentlemen: Man, like other auimals, is bora, 

 grows, comes to maturity, reproduces his like, and dies, passing in his 

 lifetime through a cycle of changes that may be compared to a secular 

 variation, by a metaphor borrowed from the science of astronomy; while 

 in his daily life he passes through a smaller cycle of changes that may 

 be called i)eriodic. 



From the time of the publication of Bichat's celebrated Essay on Life 

 and Death, it has been admitted that man and other animals possess a 

 double life, animal and organic, presided over, respectively, by two dis- 

 tinct though correlated centers of nervous force; of these, one thinks, 

 moves, and feels; the other merely cooks, receiving the food supplied, 

 changing and elaborating it into elements suitable for the use of the 

 animal life. In the lower forms of animals the organic life becomes 

 almost coextensive with the whole being of the creature, Mijich simply 

 digests, assimilates, and excretes, but barely feels or moves; in tlie 

 higher forms of animals, and more especially in man, the animal life 

 dominates over the organic life, which becomes its slave, and exhibits 

 the remarkable phenomena of mechanical force, of geometrical instinct, 

 of animal cunning, and, finally, in man himself, produces intellectual 

 work, rising to its highest form in the religious feeling that recognizes 

 its great Creator, and bows in humility before Him. It is a simj^le 

 matter of fact, and of every-day observation, that all these forms of 

 animal work are the result of the reception and assimilation of a few 

 cubic feet of oxygen, a few ounces of water, of starch, of fat, and of 

 flesh. 



The general question of the relation of food to work would involve a 

 consideration of the possibility of throwing a bridge across the gulf that 

 separates the organic from the animal life, so as to connect the products 

 of nutrition (taken in its widest sense) with the work of every kind 

 accomplished by the animal life, whether mechanical or intellectual. 

 We resemble the spiders of the heather on a summer morning, that float 

 their gossamer threads into the air from the summit of a branch, in the 

 hope that some stray breath of wind may fasten them to a neighboring 

 tuft, and enable the hungry speculator to extend the range of his ram- 

 bles and his chance of food. Already a few feeble threads connect the 

 chemistry of our food with the mechanical work done by our muscles; 

 when these shall have been securely fastened, from the higher vantage 



