189 



If wo take a strong, healthy, full-blooded man, and starve 

 him for a time, we find he loses his flesh, and there is little or 

 no blood or life left in him. Furnish him with warm water, he 

 will revive, and may thus ho kept alive for a time ; hut the 

 reduced flesh ia not restored. If we now take this famished 

 and reduced man, and furnish him gradually with food and 

 drink, ho speedily becomes robust, fleshy, and full-blooded. 

 The correct inference then is, that not only the blood, but the 

 flesh, muscle, bones, hair, and everything connected with the 

 body, must be formed from what we eat and drink, 



How is this materhl that we eat transformed into blood? The 

 stomach is analogous to a magnetic battery. The food which 

 we eat is passed into it, and dissolved there by a process of 

 chemical action between the particles of the animal, vegetable, 

 and mineral matter contained in the food, similar to that which 

 takes place in the mineral magnetic battery. This chemical 

 action is produced through the agency of the water, or the 

 fluids we drink, and with which the food is saturated. The 

 portion which has dissolved, is then forced into the arteries and 

 veins along with the blood, as new blood ; while the more 

 indigestible parts are ejected from the system, along with the 

 waste material of the body, through the intestines. 



But the blood itself is not life. It circulates through the 

 body, we are told, once in twenty minutes. There must then 

 be something to drive the new blood through the arteries 

 and veins, in order to take the place of the old which has 

 erred its purpose, and is returning laden with impurities. 

 For, while it is the function of the blood to restore the decayed 

 parts of the body, it is also its function to cany off whatever 

 inert material it wastes. 



