66 Notes from the Physiological Laboratory 



Smith and others, the branny scales are needlessly 

 irritating, and unduly hasten the passage of food 1 

 but partially digested and absorbed. The end which 

 popular hygiene attempts to effect by the retention 

 of bran in breadstuff's can be better attained by other 

 means. Thus the nutritive salts of food so fre- 

 quently lost in ordinary methods of preparation are 

 readily restored by the concentration of the liquor 

 in which meats and vegetables are cooked into a 

 soup stock, as is practised in almost every French 

 kitchen. Again, the various fresh green vegetables 

 used as salads yield in abundance these inorganic 

 food-stuffs, the presence of which we have seen is 

 indispensable to normal tissue activity. A further 

 advantage of these and other .succulent vegetables 

 lies in the fact that their cellulose, while efficient in 

 giving proper bulk and consistence to the stools, is, 

 as compared with bran-scales, soft and unirritating 

 to the digestive tract. 



From the facts, old and new, which have been 



1 An observation worthy of mention in this connection is 

 that of Kubner, who finds that while the presence of much 

 woody fibre and harder cellulose in the intestinal contents 

 induces the passage of stools containing an excess of undi- 

 gested proteid foods, the absorption of fats under the same 

 conditions is not materially affected. 



