ALIMENT. 



113 



giving the king power to restrain them, and to send 

 them out of the kingdom, on pain of transportation, 

 and, on their return, of death. The same acts also 

 direct an account to be given in of the arms of aliens, 

 which, if required, are to be delivered up ; and aliens 

 are not to go from one place to another in the king- 

 dom without passports. These acts liave been, from 

 time to time, amended and continued, as in 43 Geo. 

 III. c. 155, &c. Of late, all restrictions of fliis kind 

 on aliens have been abolished, and they are only 

 obliged to inform the secretary of the home depart- 

 ment, from time to time, of their places of residence. 

 The only restrictions of this kind, on aliens, in the 

 United States of America, are, that, in case of war 

 between the United States and any other nation, the 

 president is authorized, if he sees fit, to order the 

 . subjects of the hostile country to be apprehended and 

 removed, or to prescribe the conditions on which they 

 shall be allowed to remain in the United States. If 

 such aliens are not chargeable with actual hostility, 

 or with any other crime against the public safety, 

 they are to be allowed a reasonable time to remove 

 with their effects. During the late wars in Europe, 

 severe restraints were imposed on Englishmen in 

 France, in retaliation, as Bonaparte alleged, of the 

 strict enforcement of the British alien-acts in regard 

 to French subjects. In the states of Europe, gene- 

 rally, aliens cannot travel without passports. In 

 Britain and the United States of America, none are 

 required. 



ALIMENT; a term which includes everything 

 serving as nutriment for organized beings. In ani- 

 mals and vegetables we can observe the phenomena 

 of decomposition and reproduction, and analyse the 

 substances that administer to their growth and repair 

 distinctly. Generally, however, the word A. is used 

 for what serves as nutriment to animal life. It is, 

 in this respect, a subject of great interest for the 

 eoologist. In the present article we shall confine 

 ourselves to the aliment of mankind. Man, it is 

 well known, derives nourishment both from animal 

 and vegetable substances. He eats fruits, both 

 ripe and unripe, roots, leaves, flowers, and even the 

 pith and the bark of different plants, many diffident 

 parts of animals, and the whole of some. Climate, 

 custom, religion, the different degrees of wantemd 

 of civilization, give rise to an innumerable diversity 

 of food and drink, from the repast of the cannibal 

 savage of New Zealand to that of the Parisian epi- 

 cure at the table of Very ; from the diet of the 

 carnivorous native of the north to that of the Brah- 

 min, whose appetite is satisfied with vegetables; 

 from the oak-bark bread of the Norwegian peasant 

 to the luxuriously-served table of a Hungarian mag- 

 nate at Vienna. Some nations abhor what others 

 relish, and great want often renders acceptable 

 wliat, under other circumstances, would have excited 

 the greatest disgust. The flesh of dogs is commonly 

 eaten in China, and in Africa that ot snakes, parti- 

 cularly of the rattle-snake and boa-constrictor. 

 Locusts are eaten both in Asia and Africa, and the 

 Negroes on the coast of Guinea relish lizards, mice, 

 rats, snakes, caterpillars, and other reptiles and 

 worms. The Otomacs, a tribe of American Indians, 

 are said by Humboldt to collect a kind of clay to 

 eat in the rainy season. It is an interesting subject, 

 by no means sufficiently investigated as yet, how far 

 the different aliment of various countries is connected 

 with the climate, &c., and what influence it exerts 

 on the different races, as well as the consequences of 

 introducing new species of aliments. Some excel- 

 lent remarks on the national dishes of different 

 nations were published by baron Rumor, a German, 

 in 1822, in a work which he called Kochkun&t (Art 

 of Cookery). All kiuds of aliment must contain 



L. 



nutritious substance, which, being extracted by the 

 act of digestion (q. v.), enters the blood, and effects 

 by assimilation (q. v.) the repair of the body. (See 

 Nutrition.) Alimentary matter, therefore, must be 

 similar to animal substance, or transmutable into 

 such. In this respect alimentary substances differ 

 from medicines, because the latter retain their pecu- 

 liar qualities in spite of the organs of digestion, and 

 will not assimilate with the animal substance, but 

 act as foreign substances, serving to excite the 

 activity of particular organs or systems of the body. 

 All alimentary substances must, therefore, be com- . 

 posed, in a greater or less degree, of soluble parts, 

 which easily lose their peculiar qualities in the pro- 

 cess of digestion, and correspond to the elements of 

 the body. These substances, in their simple state, 

 are mucilage, gelatin, gluten, albumen, farina, fibrin, 

 and saccharine matter. Of these, vegetables con- 

 tain chiefly of mucilage, saccharine matter, and fari- 

 na, which latter substance, particularly in connexion 

 with the vegetable gluten, by which both become 

 fit for fermentation, and thus for dissolution and 

 digestion, is the basis of very nutritious food. The 

 nutritive part of fruits consists of their saccharine 

 matter, and a little mucilage. In animal food, 

 gelatin is particularly abundant. The nutritiousness 

 of the different species of food and drink depends, 

 therefore, upon the proportion which they contain of 

 those substances, and the mode in which they are 

 connected, favouring or obstructing their dissolution. 

 Organs of digestion in a healthy state dissolve ali- 

 mentary substances more easily, and take up the 

 nutritious portions more abundantly, tlian those ot 

 which the strength has been impaired so, that they 

 cannot resist the tendency of each substance to its 

 peculiar chemical decomposition. The wholesome 

 or unwholesome character of any aliment depends, 

 therefore, in a great measure, on the state of the 

 digestive organs, in any given case. Sometimes a 

 particular kind of food is called wholesome, because 

 it produced a beneficial effect of a particular charac- 

 ter on the system of an individual. In this case, 

 however, it is to be considered as a medicine, and 

 can be called wholesome only for those whose 

 systems are in the same condition. Very often a 

 simple aliment is made indigestible by artificial 

 cookery. Aliments abounding in fat are unwhole- 

 some, because fat resists the operation of the gastric 

 juice. The addition of too much spice makes many 

 an innocent A. injurious, because spices resist the 

 action of the digestive organs, and produce an 

 irritation of particular parts of the system. They 

 were introduced as artificial stimulants of appetite. 

 In any given case, the digestive power of the indi- 

 vidual is to be considered, in order to determine 

 whether a particular aliment is wholesome or not. 

 In general, therefore, we can only say, that that A. 

 is healthy, which is easily soluble, and is suited to 

 the power of digestion of the individual ; and, in 

 order to render the A. perfect, the nutritious parts 

 must be mixed up with a certain quantity of innocent 

 substance affording no nourishment, to fill the 

 stomach, because there is no doubt, that many 

 people injure their health by taking too much 

 nutritious food. In this case, the nutritious parts 

 which cannot be dissolved act precisely like food 

 which is in itself indigestible. (See Digestion.) In 

 Prussia and Austria, where, as in many despotic 

 governments, the .medical police is very good (this 

 being a tiling much more easily regidated in au 

 absolute government than in a free one), the public 

 officers pay much attention to aliment, and are care- 

 ful that provisions exposed to sale shall be' of a good 

 quality, particularly that no decayed or adulterated 

 things are sold to the i>oor. Such regulations exist. 

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