116 REPORT 1864. 



vegetable acids, and of starch and sugar, and tlie deportment of fat whilst in the 

 body, and its final transformation, seem to be well established ; but it yet remains 

 to show why so many substances, as fat, starch, and sugar, haying an analogous 

 composition, should be found so universally in the foods provided for man, and 

 why he seems to need a portion of each of them. The fact also that certain sub- 

 stances leave the body without having experienced any change whilst passing 

 through it, is established, as, for example, odours of almost every kind, and, so far 

 as our knowledge now extends, we may add alcohol also. I do not say " alcohols," 

 since that class embraces many iluids differing much from each other, and all except 

 alcohol itself containing elements which do undergo the process of ti-ansformation ; 

 but I refer only to alcohol, whether taken alone, or with colouring and flavouring 

 matters in spirits, or with these and certain nutritive substances in all spirits. 

 There can be no doubt that alcohol, as alcohol, leaves the body by every outlet for 

 many hours after it has been taken, and for a period of at least thirty-six hours may bo 

 found in the tissues of the body, and, so far, is conclusive proof that alcohol passes 

 through the body unchanged. The defect in the proof is, that in no case has the 

 whole of the alcohol which was taken been collected from the excretions, and 

 therefore some may have been transfonned ; and the only answer to this assimiption 

 is, that it is and will be impossible to collect all the products of excretion for so 

 long a period as the alcohol has been fomid in the body, and that as some alcohol 

 is proved to leave the body by every outlet for the longest period during which an 

 experiment can be made, and after this is found in the tissues of the body 

 unchanged, it is highly probable that the whole does pass out unchanged. 



It is no objection to this statement to affirm that alcohol is an active agent 

 in the bodj', for a substance may act phj-sically as well as chemically, and it does 

 not follow that it must change its composition in order to act. The action of 

 alcohol over the heart, the skin, the brain, and other organs is fully admitted ; but 

 this fact simply lies parallel with the other, viz. that it is taken into the body as 

 alcohol, and leaves it as alcohol. 



The digestibility and assimilability of foods must be regarded in three aspects : 

 1st, the kind of food under inquiiy, or its absolute digestibility ; 2ud, the quantity 

 of a given food which is digested ; and 3rd, the conditions under which the food is 

 acting. In reference to the quantity of food which can be assimilated, I cite the 

 instance of cheese ; for my own experiments have shown that bejond a very limited 

 amount, the nitrogenous elements of cheese do not reaj^pear as urea — that is to say, 

 whatever may be the quantity of cheese eaten, only a very limited amount of it is 

 digestel and assimilated. This is important in the case of persons who, not 

 accustomed to the use of cheese, are compelled to make a large part of their meal 

 of it, as in prisons where, by the recent alterations, 3 to 4 ozs. of cheese with bread 

 constitutes the whole of the Sunday's dinner. If only a small portion of the cheese 

 be digested, there will be a serious waste of food and also a deficiency in the nutri- 

 tive value of the dinner ; and if, as doubtless was the case, the Committee regai-ded 

 the cheese as equivalent to a proportion of meat, they have greatly erred. It is one 

 thing to add a piece of cheese, which may only in part be digested, to a good meal 

 (and it will be noticed that wherever meat can be obtained, it is eaten first and the 

 cheese supplements it), and quite another to make cheese a prime constituent of the 

 meal. It has been already sho^vn that there are certain poor districts in the kingdom, 

 as South Wales, Wilts, Dorset, and Cornwall, where a very large quantity of a 

 very low-priced cheese is eaten largely — in quantities which, measm-ed by their 

 nutritive elements, might well supplant meat ; yet the people eat it, not because 

 they prefer it to meat, and are themselves the worst fed of the whole agi-icultural 

 country. This is not in favour of the digestibility of cheese, and yet it is under 

 the advantage that the persons eating the cheese have from their childhood been 

 accustomed to its use. The same argument might be used in reference to fat, for 

 it is proved by the excretions that the quantity of fat which can be digested at a 

 time is very limited ; but I shall not pursue this argument further. 



The effect of the conditions under which foods are digested and required is now 

 much better known than heretofore. The views of Liebig as to the influence of 

 climate now require much modification ; for the abstract of the lleport on the 

 dietaries of India, which I prepared the last year, and which is now published in 



