494 PHYSIOLOGY AT THE FARM. 



tion of carbon in the constituents of the feculent matters, so 

 that the carbon contained in the carbonic acid given off in 

 respiration, is an index of nearly the whole carbon required in 

 a given time to preserve the body in a stationary state. It is 

 only in carnivorous animals, however, that the whole, or nearly 

 the whole, carbon thrown forth from the lungs in the shape of 



the length of the inclined plane to the vertical height. Thus a third 

 part must be taken from the work claimed by Eick and the same 

 proportion from that claimed by Wislicenus, so that the num- 

 bers will stand 129,096-43,032 = 86,064 metrekilograms; and 

 148,656 - 49,552 = 99,104 metrekilograms. 



With respect to the neglect of attention in this experiment to 

 the time required after exertion for the elimination of urea, it is 

 to be remarked that the ascent lasted six hours, and that, these 

 six hours included, the urine kept for examination was all collected 

 within twenty-four hours. Here they forgot the remarkable fact 

 so fully established, that urea becomes more abundant on the day 

 of rest after labour, the increase continuing usually for thirty-six 

 hours,* of which a protracted elimination is the only rational ex- 

 planation. They must have overlooked the effect of their great 

 bodily exertion in diminishing the amount of the watery secretion 

 of the kidney by which the elimination of urea is so sensibly 

 affected. The quantity of urine passed by Tick in the twenty- four 

 hours after the ascent began, but little exceeded the quantity 

 passed in the ten hours before it was entered on ; and that passed 

 by Wislicenus in that ten hours before the experiment, considerably 

 exceeded what was passed in the twenty-four hours that followed 

 the ascent. 



When all these doubts and difficulties are considered and 

 doubts and difficulties as respects either side of the controversy it 

 must be confessed they really are to sing paeans over the demoli- 

 tion of the belief that the nitrogen of the urine is derived from the 

 disintegration of the muscular tissue under the mechanical move- 

 ments of the body seems at the least to be premature. (31st Oc- 

 tober 1866). 



* Smith, ' Health and Disease/ p. 124. 



