12 ANNUAL RECEIPTS AND WASTE IN MAN. 



With these figures before us, we are able to see how the case stands. 

 The food, water, and air which a man receives amount in the aggregate 

 to more than 3000 pounds a year ; that is, to about a ton and a half, or to 

 more than twenty times his weight. This enormous mass may well at- 

 tract our attention to the expenditure of material which is required for 

 supporting life. It reveals to us the fact that the old physiological doc- 

 trine, that a living being is not influenced by external agents, is altogether 

 a fallacy. A living being is the result and representative of change on a 

 prodigious scale. 



The condition of equilibrium which has just been set forth, moreover, 

 Quantity of leads to the conclusion that the aggregate weight of urine, 

 i^manTifa 601 ^ eces ? transpired, and expired matter is the same for the 

 year. same period of time. In round numbers, we may take it at 



a ton and a half. 



It can not be questioned that the materials which are rendered back to 

 the external world, after having subserved the purpose of the animal and 

 passed through its system, are compounds of those which were originally 

 received as food, drink, and air, though they may have assumed in their 

 course other, and perhaps, in our estimation, viler forms. Eecognizing 

 as indisputable the physical fact that not an atom can be created any 

 more than it can be destroyed, we should expect to discover in the sub- 

 stances thus dismissed from the system every particle that had been 

 taken in. 



What, then, is man ? Is he not a form, as is the flame of a lamp, the 

 temporary result and representative of myriads of atoms that are fast 

 passing through states of change a mechanism, the parts of which are 

 unceasingly taken asunder and as unceasingly replaced ? The appear- 

 ance of corporeal identity he presents year after year is only an illusion. 

 He begins to die the moment he begins to breathe. One particle after 

 another is removed away, interstitial death occurring even in the inmost 

 recesses of the body. 



From these general considerations we infer that the essential condition 

 Great extent of of life is waste of the body ; and this not only of the body 

 the system of** in tne aggregate, but even of each of its particular parts, 

 man. Whatever part it may be that is exercised is wearing away, 



and wherever there is activity there is death. And since parts that are 

 dead are useless, or even injurious to the economy, the necessities simul- 

 taneously arjse for their removal and for repair. Much of the compli- 

 cated mechanism of animal structures is for the accomplishment of this 

 double duty. 



For an organic being to live, its parts must die. The amount of activ- 

 ity it displays is measured by the amount of death, and in this regard 

 every member of the animal series stands on the same level. Here, at 



