88 PROPERTIES OF 



course of curious experiments, made by weighing himself after 

 living for some time on different sorts of food, discovered that 

 a less quantity of suet was sufficient to make up for the waste 

 of his body, than of any other sort of ordinary food ; and that 

 when compared with the lean part of the meat, its nutritive 

 power was, at least, as three to one. 



I may here add another circumstance that occurred to me 

 when I first thought on this subject, which is, that since we 

 believe the oil, or animal fat, is reabsorbed from the adipose 

 membrane to serve for nourishment to the body ; and as some 

 of the patients (whose cases have been related above) could not 

 take food, the reabsorption therefore of this oil might not be 

 so much the cause, as the effects of the disorder under which 

 they then laboured ; or, in other words, that upon some de- 

 fect in the digestive organs, the powers of nature drew from 

 their magazines of oil in the adipose membrane a supply of 



observations, with experiments dietetical and statical, were revised and 

 published from his original MSS. by Dr. James Carmichael Smith, 4to, 

 Lond. 1788. Dr. Stark died in 1770, seemingly from the effects of his 

 experiments ; he was encouraged in them by Dr. Franklin and by 

 Sir John Pringle. 



Liebig considers fat as chiefly useful, by its slow combustion during 

 respiration, in maintaining animal heat. Nearly two centuries ago, an 

 opinion was current, and opposed by Needham a that the body is kept 

 warm by an internal combustion of the blood, chiefly in the lungs. 

 Fatty matter, I believe, b is intimately concerned in growth and nutrition, 

 healthy and diseased. The base of the chyle, referred to in Note LVII, 

 is made up of minute and equal-sized fatty or oily particles ; the mole- 

 cules or seeds of cells, so abundant in the semen of oviparous vertebrate 

 animals, just before the breeding season, are composed chiefly of fatty 

 matter ; and such also is more or less the nature of elementary granules 

 generally, and of the nucleoli of cells. The analyses of Dr. Davy 

 support my observations as to the fatty nature of the molecules of cells 

 in disease/ Mr. George Ross e is of opinion that the general lymphatic 

 system converts oily matter into a compound of protein ; and he states 

 that Dr. Carpenter included in this idea the whole supposed waste 

 reorganizable matter of the system. 



a De Formato Fcetu, cap. vi, 12mo, Lond. d Notes appended to Dr. Boyd's Vital 



1667. Statistics, in Edin. Med. and Surg. 



b Med. Chirurg. Trans, xxvi, 93-6; Journ.lx, 159 et seq. Henle, Anat. 



London Med. Gaz. June 21, 1844, Gen.tr. par Jourdan, p. 126; Ascher- 



p. 411. son, Mr. Paget's Report, Br. and 



Proceed, of Zoological Society, 1842, For. Med. Rev. xiv, 263. 



pp. 99 et seq. e Lancet, 1843-4, i, 629. 



