THE FOOD WE GIVE. 
595 
entertained by more than one of even the early Greek philo¬ 
sophers, but it was reserved for the modern chemist to prove 
the truth of the supposition. This has been thus explained 
by Dr. Lyon Playfair {Jour. R. A. S., vol. iv., p. 2l6) :—All 
vegetable food has been found to contain a peculiar substance, 
which, though it differs in appearance and in form, according 
to the source from whence it is obtained, is in reality the 
same body. It has received the name of gluten or albumen, 
and is precisely identical, in chemical composition, with the 
albumen obtained from the white of an egg. This substance 
is invariably present in all nutritious food. Chemists were 
surprised to discover that this body never varies in composi¬ 
tion ; that it is exactly the same in corn, beans, or from what¬ 
ever plant it is extracted. But their suprise was much in¬ 
creased when they remarked that it is quite identical with 
the flesh and blood of animals. It consists, like the latter, 
of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, and in the very 
same proportion in 100 parts. By identity in composition 
is not meant a mere similarity, but an absolute identity; so 
much so, that if you were to place in a chemist’s hand some 
gluten obtained from wheat-flour, some dry albumen pro¬ 
cured from the white of an eo-o- a frao-ment of the flesh of an 
ox or of a man, or some of their dried blood, and request him 
to examine their difference, he would tell you, strange as it 
may appear, that they are precisely the same, and that with 
all the refinements of his science he was unable to detect an}” 
essential difference between them. There is much difference, 
indeed, in external appearance and in structure, but in their 
ultimate composition there is none. To render this more 
obvious, I subjoin the composition of these various sub¬ 
stances, as obtained by different chemists, who executed their 
analyses without any knowledge of the results obtained by 
Ox Flesh. 
54-12 
7-89 
15-67 
22-32 
the others : 
Gluten 
Casein 
from Flour. 
from Peas. 
Carbon . 
. 54-2 
54-138 
Hydrogen 
. 7-5 
7-156 
Nitrogen 
. 13-9 
15-672 
Oxygen 
. 24-4 
23-034 
100-0 
100-000 
100-00 
These analyses do not differ from each other more than 
the analyses of the same substance usually do. Thus we are 
led to the startling conclusion that plants contain within 
them the flesh of animals ready formed, and that the only 
duty of animals subsisting upon them is to give this flesh a 
XLII. 41 
