ANIMAL HEAT. 409 



from 7 to 11 per hour. Death usually occured when the 

 diminution had amounted to about 30. x 



When the surrounding conditions call for the develop- 

 ment of an unusual amount of heat, the diet is always 

 modified, both as regards the quantity and kind of food ; but 

 when food is taken in sufficient quantity and is of a kind 

 capable of maintaining proper nutrition, its composition 

 does not affect the general temperature. If we were to 

 adopt without reserve the view that the non-nitrogenized 

 alimentary principles are the sole agents in the production 

 of heat, we should certainly be able to determine either an 

 increase in the animal heat or a greater loss of heat from 

 the surface, in persons partaking largely of this kind of 

 food. This, however, has not been shown to be true ; and 

 the temperature of the body seems to be uniform in the 

 same climate, even in persons living upon entirely different 

 kinds of food. The elaborate observations of Dr. Davy are 

 very conclusive on this point: "The similarity of tem- 

 perature in different races of men is the more remarkable, 

 since between several of them whose temperatures agreed, 

 there was nothing in common but the air they breathed 

 some feeding on animal food almost entirely, as the Yaida 

 others chiefly on vegetable diet, as the priests of Boodho 

 and others, as Europeans and Africans, on neither exclu- 

 sively, but on a mixture of both." a 



Xevertheless, the conditions of external temperature 

 have a remarkable influence upon the diet. It is well 

 known, for example, that in the heat of summer, the 

 amount of meats and fat taken is small, and the succulent, 

 fresh vegetables and fruits, large, as compared with the diet 

 in the winter. But although the proportion of starchy mat- 

 ters in many of the fresh vegetables used during a short season 

 of the year is not large, these articles are equally deficient 



1 CHOSSAT, Recherches experimentales sur ^inanition, Paris, 1843, p. 123. 



2 DATY, Researches, Physiological and Anatomical, London, 1839, vol. i., p. 

 197. 



