620 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, 



But whatever we take into the stomach, whether good or bad 

 food, must be either immediately absorbed from the stomach and 

 poured directly into the blood, as in case of water, oil and alco- 

 hol; or the food must be disintegrated, digested and absorbed 

 from the intestines into the blood and thence circulated into 

 every part of the body ; otherwise the food would soon sour in 

 the stomach, and then we would soon vomit it forth, or else eject 

 it down through the intestinal canal in diarrhoea. After the 

 vital functions have taken out of the blood whatever it can use 

 to advantage in the maintenance of the body, then all the re- 

 maining materials in the blood must be circulated round and 

 round the circuits of the veins and arteries, until either tempo- 

 rarily stored in morbid muscle or adipose fat, or else excreted 

 and cleared out before they ferment or mortify in the body. 



When the waste of the plethoric system, and the excess of 

 good and bad food is excreted very much through the lungs in 

 breathing, or coughing up phlegm and the discharges of pustules, 

 then foetid breath, consumption, bronchitis, phthisic or diptheria 

 monopolize the lungs, rather than normal breathing and the 

 oxygenation of the blood. When such excretions mainly escape 

 into the stomach or intestines, then dyspepsia or diarrhoea venti- 

 lates the ill-fed body. But when such excretions of disorganized 

 materials persistently tend to escape through the skin by morbid 

 perspiration, then the skin is soon corroded into such scrofulous 

 conditions as salt rheum, erysipelas humors and boils ; none of 

 ■ which can be cured while the invalid continues to cultivate them 

 by either excess or bad selections of food, or by indiscreet labor, 

 or by exposures to extremes of climate. Finally, after the mor- 

 bid muscles and soft adipose fat, temporarily formed and stored 

 up from disorganized materials of food, have accumulated and 

 lasted about six or eight weeks, then the force of ordinary 

 vitality can fully control and preserve the putrefying and fer- 

 menting substances no longer ; and now foetid breath, cold per- 

 spiration, coughs, diarrhoea, humors, boils and febrile excretions 

 ensue to disencumber the body of imperfectly organized accumu- 

 lations ; or else they entirely consume the vital powers and life 

 ceases. 



Having briefly considered the general operations and effects of 

 food, whose particles have been somewhat disorganized by the 

 various modes of destructive analysis, I propose hereafter to con- 

 fine my remarks more directly to the consideration and excretion 



