262 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[October 1, 1870. 
vatives, such as alcohol, etc., in the process of heat 
production. The limited conceptions of food mate¬ 
rials, which rest upon observations of the processes 
taking place in the organisms of herbivorous and 
carnivorous animals, must be considerably extended 
in the case of man. 
Since the term digestion cannot be understood in 
a chemical sense, otherwise than as the. process by 
which the colloids of the food—comprising albumen, 
casein, gelatin, starch and gum, etc.—are trans¬ 
formed into a diffusible condition, it may be under¬ 
stood that the constituents of muscular juices, when 
taken in the food, require, for the most part, no di¬ 
gestion ; and that they are, when taken in meat diet 
or alone, first of all brought into the circulation, ex¬ 
ercising the action peculiar to them, long before the 
albumen has been rendered soluble in the stomach. 
They are among the normal constituents of flesh, 
and must be regarded as highly efficient nutritive 
material; not, however, in the sense in which albu¬ 
men is nutritive, but in a much higher sense. It is 
impossible for these substances to replace albumen 
in its functions; but they have an activity indepen¬ 
dent of albumen, they are nutritive materials which 
economize work and augment power in certain 
directions. 
In like manner, gelatin must be comprised among 
the nutritive substances that economize albumen. 
Studied from this point of view we shall, it is to 
be hoped, have to anticipate an entirely different 
view of the action of various articles of diet, and 
even the action of some medicines may become ex¬ 
plicable by such an expansion of the idea of nutri¬ 
tion. 
I regard it as quite indubitable that vegetable diet 
nmy, by addition of the extractive substance of flesh, 
acquire an action upon the human body just the 
same as a meat diet exerts ; of course, under the as¬ 
sumption that there is in the vegetable food a suffi¬ 
cient quantity of digestible albuminates. Certainly, 
the extract of meat is the only available means of 
making up for a dearth of animal food. In regard 
to matters of this kind controversy is inadmissible, 
and the dietetic value of the material must be tried 
upon men, and not upon dogs.* 
* Experiments undertaken at my suggestion by Dr. E. 
Bischoff, in 'which extract of meat was added to bread in order 
-lo increase its nutritive power and facility of assimilation in the 
case of a dog, have not been successful, as might have been fore¬ 
seen by a more judicious consideration of facts previously 
known. Their failure was due to the nature of the carnivorous 
animals. The animal could not eat a sufficient quantity of 
vegetable food to meet the requirements of maintaining the 
body-weight, neither could the starch consumed be digested 
•completely. 
In one experiment made by Bischoff and Voit, it appeared 
that a dog, weighing 34 kilograms, fed for forty days with as 
anuch bread as he could eat, did not consume more than 771 
grams of bread daily, while he digested only seven-eighths of 
this quantity, the remainder passing away in the faeces, which 
contained a recognizable quantity of starch. 
In the 6/6 grams of bread assimilated, there were con¬ 
tained :— 
Bread albuminate, Starch, 
56| grams. 299 grams. 
Calculating the starch into its equivalent of fat (24 starch 
== 10 fat), and assuming the addition of meat-extract to have, 
as it were, converted the bread-albuminate into flesh, the dog 
would have consumed:— 
In the form of flesh, Of fat, 
267 grams. 125 grams. 
But this ration would be insufficient for a dog weighing 34 
kilograms in order to maintain his body-weight. The dog 
It is right to investigate details in order to com¬ 
prehend the whole in its origin and action, but in 
order to interpret details correctly, it is necessary 
to have a clear conception of the whole in its many- 
sided aspects and surroundings. 
I know pretty well how to estimate the significance 
of experiments or facts, and how unlike they are in 
value for drawing conclusions. The simple observa¬ 
tion of a natural phenomenon which takes place 
without our aid is very much more important, though 
frequently much more difficult, than the processes set 
going in experiments at our will. In the former, 
reality is always reflected’ while experiments reflect 
only the imperfection of our ideas. 
I remember years ago in walking along the road 
from Berchtesgaden, on the Konig lake, to have ar¬ 
rived at a conviction as to the source of carbon in 
plants by means of a very simple observation. At 
that time great uncertainty prevailed in regard to 
this matter, and it was difficult to get beyond the be¬ 
lief in humus being the source of the carbon in 
plants. But at the place I have mentioned there is 
evidence that the carbon of plants can only be derived 
from carbonic acid, and the proof of this is furnished 
by nature herself. There masses of rock which have 
fallen down from the surrounding mountains may be 
seen with trees thirty or forty feet high growing upon 
remained in a state of hunger. The maintenance of his body- 
weight could have been expected only when the assimilated 
starch had been mixed with four times as much vegetable 
albumen, in the form for instance of gluten, or when it had 
been possible for the dog to digest twice as much starch in 
addition to the bread-albuminate consumed; but he could 
not fully digest even the quantity consumed. 
Assuming that the dog fed with bread gives off as much 
nitrogen as intestinal secretion in the faeces as the dog fed 
with meat, and calculating from this quantity of nitrogen, it 
would appear that the dog digested the bread-albuminate to 
within 61/ per cent. 
Comparing the ration of pure vegetable diet, which will 
maintain a man in a state of perfect ability to work, with 
that 'which a dog can digest, the difference in their capacity 
of digestion at once becomes apparent. A wood-cutter re¬ 
ceives from his employers when he goes after breakfast on a 
Monday into the forest, 3‘4 pounds of dripping, 7‘8 pounds 
of meal and 4 - 5 pounds of bread. He comes home on Satur¬ 
day eyening to supper. This quantity of food is, therefore, 
sufficient for five days, it represents—when the starch is cal¬ 
culated as fat and the bread as meat, 100 meal = 140 bread, in 
which there is 8 per cent, albuminate—a daily quantity of :— 
Flesh, Fat, 
540 grams. 626 grams. 
Taking the weight of the wood-cutter as double that of the 
dog or 68 kilograms, he would receive in his meal and fat 
diet nearly the same quantity of meat as the dog, but 2\ 
times as much respiratory material. It is this that is defi¬ 
cient in the case of the dog, and this is what must be sup¬ 
plied from its body. The wood-cutter provides himself also 
with a portion of baked fruit, certainly not merely for the 
sake, of his palate, for he thus increases the quantity of alka¬ 
lies in his food. These wood-cutters work steadily, but not 
rapidly; they are powerful and have a good muscular deve¬ 
lopment. 
Experiments with dogs are evidently destitute of any prac¬ 
tical value for judging as to the nutritive power of vegetable 
food, and it is in no degree more possible to test the value 
of meat-extract for improving vegetable diet by experiments 
on carnivorous animals, for in their case we have no measure 
of the capacity for work. The addition of meat-extract to 
the meal diet of the wood-cutter would have exercised an en¬ 
tirely different influence in regard to his power of working. 
The statistics of consumption of food among the Bavarian 
wood-cutters, which I have received from trustworthy sources, 
disprove the very general opinion that these people are cap¬ 
able of hard work with a diet consisting chiefly of sugar and 
bacon. Opinions of this kind are, from a scientific point of 
view, not worth consideration. 
