“THE METABOLISM OF THE BODY. 467 
Pathological.— It is found that many drugs and poisons 
lower temperature, acting in a variety of ways. In certain dis- 
eases, as cholera, the temperature may sink to 23° C. in extreme 
cases before death supervenes. When the temperature of the 
blood is raised 6° C. (as in sunstroke, etc.), death occurs; and it 
is well known that prolonged high temperature leads to fatty 
degeneration of the tissues generally. All the evidence goes.to 
show that in fever both the heat production and the heat ex- 
penditure are interfered with; or, at least, if not always, that 
there may be in certain cases such a double disturbance. In 
fever excessive consumption of oxygen and production of car- 
bon dioxide occur, the metabolism is quickened, hence its wast- 
ing (consuming) effects; the rapid respiration tends to increase 
the thirst, from the extra amount of aqueous vapor exhaled. 
The body is actually warmest during the “cold stage” of ague, 
when the vessels of the skin are constricted and the patient 
feels cold, because the internal metabolism is heightened ; while 
the “sweating stage” is marked by a natural fall of tempera- 
ture. The fact that the skin may be dry and pale in fever 
shows that the thermotoxic nervous mechanism is at fault; but 
the chemical facts cited above (excess of CO,, etc.) indicate that 
the thermogenic mechanism is also deranged. 
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
If the student will now read afresh what has been written 
under the above heading in relation to the subject of digestion, it 
will probably appear in a'new light. We endeavored to show 
that, according to that general principle of correlation which 
holds throughout the entire organism, and in harmony with 
certain facts, we were bound to believe that digestion and as- 
similation, or, to speak in other terms, the metabolic processes 
of the various tissues, in a somewhat restricted sense, were 
closely related. Beneath the common observation that “ diges- 
tion waits on appetite” lies the deeper truth that food is not 
prepared in the alimentary canal (digested) without some rela- 
tion to the needs of the system generally. In other words, the 
voice of the tissues elsewhere is heard in the councils of the 
digestive track, and is regarded; and this is effected chiefly 
through the nervous system. Gluttony may lead to vomiting 
or diarrhcea—plain ways of getting rid of what can not be 
digested. But how is it that a hungry man who has been with- 
out food for twenty-four hours can digest with ease a quantity 
