408 NUTRITION. 



a certain relation to calorification. This is inevitable from 

 the connection of animal heat with the general process 

 of nutrition ; but this relation is expressed in the con- 

 nection of calorification with nutrition of the tissues, and 

 not in the process of preparation or absorption of food. We 

 shall see that when nutrition is modified by alimentation, 

 the general temperature is always more or less affected ; and 

 when the requirements of the system, as far as the genera- 

 tion of heat is concerned, are changed, by climate or other- 

 wise, alimentation is modified. One of the objects of ali- 

 mentation and nutrition is to maintain the body at a nearly 

 constant temperature. 



The influence of defective nutrition or inanition upon 

 the heat of the body is very marked. John Hunter, in his 

 experiments upon animal heat, made a few observations upon 

 this point, and noted a decided fall in temperature in a 

 mouse kept fasting. 1 The same phenomena were also ob- 

 served by Collard de Martigny ; a but Chossat, to whose 

 memoir we have so fully referred in another volume under 

 the head of inanition, noted the effects of deprivation of 

 food upon the power of maintaining the animal temperature, 

 in the most exact and satisfactory manner. This point has 

 already been so fully considered that it is only necessary in 

 this connection to note the general results. In pigeons, the 

 extreme diurnal variation in temperature, under normal con- 

 ditions, was found by Chossat to be 1'3. During the prog- 

 ress of inanition, the daily variation was increased to 5 '9, 

 with a slight, but well-marked diminution in the absolute 

 temperature ; and the periods of minimum temperature were 

 unusually prolonged. Immediately preceding death from 

 starvation, the diminution in temperature became very 

 rapid, the rate, in the observations on turtle-doves, being 



1 Op. tit., p. 114. 



* COLLARD DE MARTIGNY, RecJierches experimentales sur les effete de I ^abstinence 

 complete d'alimens solides et liquides. Journal de physiologic, Paris, 1828, tomo 

 viii., p. 163. 



