78 
Dr. Beale, on Nutrition. 
this : or the process of removal may proceed faster than the 
process of nutrition. It is, therefore, obvious that nutrition 
cannot be held to mean the mere addition of new matter to a 
living body. 
Suppose we now consider what actually occurs when simple 
living matter, like an amoeba, or a white blood-corpuscle, or a 
pus-corpuscle, is nourished. Matter either in a state of solution 
or capable of being readily dissolved passes into the matter of 
which the living body is composed. Some of the constituents 
become part of the living body, while others are given off. 
The living body then increases in size. It is nourished and 
grows. In other instances, as in many of the lower vege- 
table organisms, and in the cells of the higher, a coloured 
material or matter having some peculiar properties is formed 
while the process of nutrition is proceeding. Now, this 
matter did not exist in the pabulum, nor was it to be detected 
in the living matter which absorbed the pabulum, but it 
results from the death of the living matter under certain con- 
ditions. In this case, then, the pabulum is first changed into 
living matter, and the living matter into the coloured or 
other formed material. In some instances this formed 
material accumulates in the elementary part itself, as in the 
case of starch in vegetable cells and fat in animal cells, 
and there is a gain in weight. In other cases the formed 
material passes away from the germinal matter as fast as it is 
produced, dissolved in fluid or in a gaseous state, and no 
alteration in weight occurs, although a large quantity of 
nutrient matter is taken up. Usually, of the formed material 
produced, part accumulates on the surface of the germinal 
matter and part escapes. Consider what occurs in the 
nutrition of ordinary yeast. A layer of cellulose matter which 
increases by the addition of new layers to its inner surface is 
formed externally. Within this is the transparent living or 
germinal matter. When such a particle is nourished the 
pabulum passes through the cellulose wall into the germinal 
matter, and thus the substance increases ; but at the same 
time some of the germinal matter becomes converted into new 
cellulose, which is added to that already existing, and alcohol, 
water, and carbonic acid, which escape. The germinal matter 
differs from the pabulum, and both differs in physical cha- 
racters and chemical composition and properties from the 
cellulose envelope. We cannot make the cellulose or the ger- 
minal matter from the pabulum,nor can the pabulum be obtained , 
as it was before, from either of the above substances. How 
different are all these processes from the mere addition of 
matter previously held in solution, as occurs in the formation 
