ALIMENTARY ENERGETICS. II7 



it is just the profound reasons for this traditional 

 practice that we are trying to discover. 



The problem of alimentation may be looked at in a 

 thousand ways. It is culinary, no doubt, and gas- 

 tronomic ; but it is also economical and social, 

 agricultural, fiscal, hygienic, medical, and even moral. 

 But first and foremost, it is physiological. It com- 

 prises and assumes the knowledge of the general 

 composition of foods, of their transformations in the 

 digestive apparatus, and their comparative utility in 

 the maintenance and the sound functional activity 

 of the organism. To this first group of subjects for 

 our discussion are attached others relating to the 

 effects of inanition, of insufficient alimentation, and of 

 over-feeding. And in order to throw light on all 

 these aspects of the problem of alimentation, we have 

 to lay bare the most intimate and delicate reactions by 

 which the organism is maintained and recruited, and, 

 in the words of a celebrated physiologist, " to pene- 

 trate into the kitchen of vital phenomena." And here 

 neither Apicius, nor Brillat-Savarin, nor Berchoux, 

 nor the moralists, nor the economists are of any use 

 to us as guides. We must appeal to the scientists, 

 who, following the example of Lavoisier, Berzelius, 

 Regnault, and Liebig, have applied to the study of 

 living beings the resources of general science, and 

 have thus founded chemical biology. 



This branch of science developed considerably in 

 the second half of the nineteenth century. It has now 

 its methods, its technique, its chairs at the universities, 

 its laboratories, and its literature. It has particularly 

 applied itself to the study of the " material changes" 

 or the Metabolism of living beings, and with that 

 object in view it has done two things In the first 



