Chap, vii.] ULTIMATE PHENOMENA OF ANIMAL NUTRITION. 147 



absorption of the aliments ; it is then very natural that during 

 abstinence they should be diminished or suppressed. The liver 

 ceases to form animal starch, which normally contributes to its 

 fabrication of sugar (CI. Bernard). The urine still contains urea, 

 the principal residuum of the combustion of the proteic sub- 

 stances of the tissues ; but naturally, it contains less and less 

 of it. 



The digestive tube shrinks ; sometimes even it becomes 

 ulcerated by the local re-absorption of its anatomical elements. 



Vital combustion being gradually extinguished, respiration, 

 which furnishes it with the necessary quantity of oxygen, or at 

 least with the major part of this oxygen, performs its functions 

 with gradually decreasing energy. The movements of the 

 muscles are retarded. It is the same with the beatings of the 

 heart, which, in a man in a state of inanition, have been known 

 to fall to 38 per minute. The wearing out and rapid re-absorption 

 of the very tissue of the heart is now added to the general 

 nutritive depression. 



The functional disturbances of the nervous centres are still 

 very imperfectly determined. They are sometimes absolutely 

 wanting in man. In animals, however, notice has been taken of 

 insomnia, first a period of agitation, then a period of stupor, 

 finally one of fury ; in man, there are often hallucinations.^ 



Abstinence is naturally better supported when the movement 

 of life is less energetic. Burdach ^ has in an interesting manner 

 connected with this subject some facts observed in the most 

 various animals. After six weeks of abstinence, a snail had only 

 lost an eleventh part of its weight ; fresh- water polypi can live 

 without food for five and even ten years ; toads, two years ; 

 Chinese gold-fish, several years ; salamanders, six months ; a 

 toad shut up in a porous vessel tightly closed, the vessel being 

 surrounded with earth saturated with humidity, was still living, 

 though very thin, at the end of two years. It had been kept in 



^ OoUard de Martigny, Journal de Magendie, t. viii. 

 ' TraiU de Physiologie. 



L 2 



