THE FOOD QUESTION 



cepted by a nerve cell which demands the 

 most elaborate and varied menu of any- 

 thing living. They all get what they want 

 from that wonderfully composite, all- 

 nourishing blood, but they carefully select 

 just what they want and reject what they 

 do not want. The cells which make hairs 

 never allow any ingredients of the bile, 

 which liver cells make, to enter them. 

 And so on to the end. No such multi- 

 form discrimination meets us anywhere as 

 in this realm of life. 



This very particular selection by body 

 cells of their food stuffs, is one of the great 

 puzzles of biologists. Many of them have 

 come to the conclusion that the cells know 

 so well what they ought to have that they 

 must be actually endowed with conscious- 

 ness and choose accordingly. Professor G. 

 Bunge * of the University of Basle quotes 



* Textbook of Physiological and Pathological Chem- 

 istry, P. Blakiston & Son, Philadelphia, 1902. 



121 



