CHEMISTRY OF STARVATION. 351 



of a long-forgotten injury, the honourable scar, 

 or the effect of a severe laceration, remain in 

 enduring memorial of the event upon the un- 

 changing yet ever altered surface. Although 

 undergoing perpetual alteration of their parts, 

 the features with all their characteristics re- 

 main the same. Time may indeed brush the 

 down off the young man's face, and blanch the 

 ruddy hue of the maiden's cheek ; it may pinch 

 up the full features of youth into the withered 

 lineaments of age ; but a little mole on the skin 

 defies the effects of time, and even of death 

 entering the tomb with the rest of the cold clay 

 it had so long distinguished. 



The atmosphere must be considered as one of 

 the grand agents in the perpetual work of re- 

 paration and destruction. Its chemical ener- 

 gies are continually arrayed against the very 

 existence of the human body. It is only by 

 daily recruiting his strength that man is able 

 even for his brief allotted period of life to offer 

 a sufficient opposition to its effects to permit 

 of his healthy existence. If his means of so 

 doing fail, a destructive process immediately 

 commences. The active lungs continue their 

 incessant play, and the swift-flowing blood 

 demands and receives from the tissues of the 

 frame the fuel for which these organs call. 

 The stored-up fat quickly disappears ; the round 

 contour of health vanishes ; starvation begins. 



