ALIMENTARY ENERGETICS. 129 



are varieties of albumen, carbo-hydrates, and fatty 

 bodies, the heats of combustion of which in the 

 organism oscillate in the neighbourhood of the num- 

 bers 4.8, 4.2, and 9.4. Each of these bodies has been 

 individually examined, and numerical tables have 

 been drawn up by Berthelot, Rubner, Stohmann, Van 

 Noorden, etc. The tables exhibit the thermal value 

 or energetic value of very different kinds of foods. 



In our climate, the adult average man, doing no 

 laborious work, daily consumes a maintenance ration 

 composed, as a rule, of 100 grammes of albuminoids, 

 49 grammes of fats, and 403 grammes of carbo- 

 hydrates. This ration has an energetic value of 2,600 

 Calories. 



It is therefore, thanks to the victories won in the 

 field of thermo-chemistry, and to the principles laid 

 down since 1864 by M. Berthelot, that this second 

 method of attack on nutritive dynamism has been 

 rendered possible. Physiologists, by the aid of these 

 methods, have drawn up balance-sheets of energy for 

 living beings just as they had previously established 

 balance-sheets of matter. 



Now, it is precisely researches of this kind that we 

 have indicated here as a consequence of biological 

 energetics, which in reality have helped to build up 

 that principle. These researches have shown us that, 

 in conformity with the principles of thermodynamics, 

 there was not, in fact, in the organism, any trans- 

 formation of heat into mechanical work, as the 

 physiologists for a short time supposed, on the 

 authority of Berthelot. With the help of our theory 

 this mistake is no longer possible. The doctrine of 

 energetics shows us in fact the current of energy 

 dividing itself, as it issues from the living being, into 



