September 17,1870.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
223 
The feeders cf cattle distinguish fodder that pro¬ 
duces power from ordinary fodder. Of the former 
land are the seeds of cereals and Leguminosce , which 
are richest in albuminates and starch, the most 
easly digested vegetable food; they require less in¬ 
ternal work, and much less time for digestion in the 
stomachs of the animals and for their transfer into 
the circulation, than is required by the nutritive ma¬ 
terial of grass or hay; and it is well known what a 
( considerable influence is exercised on the vigour of 
a horse by the addition of oats to liay-fodder, or on 
the production of flesh in oxen and pigs by beans or 
peas. 
Whatever internal work the animal is relieved of 
in one direction becomes available in another direc¬ 
tion. 
Just the same laws obtain for man who com¬ 
bines the peculiarities of both the herbivora and 
the carnivora. 
There are large classes of society, whole nations of 
people, who live exclusively on vegetable food and 
possess the full working capacity of working animals, 
but man, on the whole cannot dispense with meat 
when engaged in a higher order of work. 
This is the case in a special degree for the labour 
of the brain or intellectual work which the animal 
has not to perform. This involves as great, and 
perhaps much greater expenditure of internal force 
as mechanical work by the limbs. For the mainte¬ 
nance of such work an artificially prepared food is of 
especial utility to a man, and every one knows that 
when his digestive organs come into conflict with his 
food the capacity for either intellectual and bodily 
work is thereby reduced. The food must be of such 
a character that the work of. digestion and various 
other kinds of internal work shall not be interfered 
with. The mere prevention of sleep in consequence 
of eating indigestible food will, in this respect, pro¬ 
duce a difference. 
It is also intelligible that for a carnivorous animal 
a certain weight of albuminates eaten in the form of 
bread cannot be equal to the same weight of albumi¬ 
nates in its flesli-diet, in which the albuminates are 
taken, not only in a concentrated form most suitable 
to the capacity and power of exercise of the digestive 
organs, but at the same time meat supplies all the 
constituents of the muscular juices. In the case of 
a carnivorous animal the food taken requires a 
minimum of internal work for the reconversion of its 
constituents into muscular apparatus capable of ex¬ 
ertion and for making them serviceable for the other 
requirements of the body. 
The conversion of a part of the plant-albuminate 
into the soluble constituents of muscle would require 
in the animal’s body a certain amount of work, that 
it would be relieved of almost entirely when the albu¬ 
minate was supplied as meat.* 
* This will perhaps account for the remarkable fact ob¬ 
served by Bischoff and Yoit with the dog as regards the in¬ 
crease of body-weight under meat diet. 
A dog that had been reduced by feeding it on bread, and of 
34 kilograms weight, was then fed with 1800 grams of meat, 
and, on the first day, it gained 600 grams. One-third of the 
meat eaten remained in the dog’s body and increased its 
weight g^th. 
On the. contrary, in feeding oxen, the rule is that for the 
increase in body-weight of 1 pound (= 125 grm. dry), from 
four to six times as much albuminates must be supplied in the 
food; a tolerably sure indication how much more work and 
material is expended by the herbivorous animal in producing 
flesh. 
In roasting and boiling meat, the flesh albuminates 
coagulate, the soluble constituents of muscle pass 
into the liquid which is retained almost entirely, in 
the case of roast meat, within it as in a sponge. 
Physiologists have made the remarkable observation 
that flesh albuminates, when coagulated by heat and 
sufficiently subdivided by mastication, are more solu¬ 
ble, or, as this is generally expressed, more digestible 
than they are in the raw state. Both raw and cooked 
albuminates are converted in the stomach into one 
and the same product, peptone, while the most 
general experience shows that roast meat, as well as 
boiled meat eaten with the broth in which it has 
been boiled, possesses the same nutritive value as the 
raw meat that a carnivorous animal eats. Conse¬ 
quently the soluble constituents of muscle hi cooked 
meat must perform the same duty in the human 
organism as they do in the organism of the car¬ 
nivora. 
The organs of digestion have the greatest bulk of 
all the organs of the body; next to the heart and 
breathing muscles, they have the most severe interior 
work to perform. A muscular apparatus of conside¬ 
rable development works for hours hi order to set in 
motion the relatively heavy mass of food and to 
affect the intermixture of all its parts with the se¬ 
creted juices of the stomach, so that it is easy to 
understand how the force which those muscles expend 
must be derived chiefly from the muscles of voluntary 
motion, and hence it is that rest of the body is one 
of the conditions of active digestion.* 
The influence of indigestible food or of a disturb¬ 
ance of the digestion upon the activity of all the 
organs in the body, upon the mechanical work of the 
limbs, the work of the brain and upon sleep is suffi¬ 
ciently well known. It is evident that food which 
is difficult to digest requires a longer time, while 
easily-digestible food requires a shorter time for its 
digestion, and that the time must be proportionate 
to the work to be performed; the shorter the time of 
digestion the more force is economized, and of course 
reserved for other organs. From this point of view, 
viz. economy of working power, the art of preparing 
food for men as well as for animals acquires a high 
significance. 
“ Soup and porridge,” says Hippocrates, “ were 
invented because experience taught men that the 
food which suits healthy people is not applicable for 
the sick.” 
I have already mentioned the remarkable result 
that is attained by a simple mechanical subdivision 
of certain kinds of vegetable food in regard to their 
digestion in the stomach of a carnivorous animal; it 
spares the animal the work of chewing and enhances 
the digestibility of the food. Probably by boiling 
meal to porridge, by the conversion of starch into 
dextrin and sugar, together with the addition of 
proper condiments, etc., the nutritive value of the 
food may be yet further augmented for the animal. 
For man especially, the proper selection and pre¬ 
paration of his food are of vast importance for the 
development and exercise of all his powers. 
* The influence of different kinds of working apparatus 
upon each other is easily intelligible if we think of what takes 
place in a factory whereby a single steam engine, or by the 
available power, several machines are kept at work ; for ex¬ 
ample, a hammer and a rolling-mill at the same time. When 
the rolls are in full work, the hammer does but little, and 
when the hammer is being worked, only thin plates can bo 
rolled. 
