An argument on behalf of the primitive diet of man ... / by Frederic R. Lees.

  • Lees, Frederic Richard, 1815-1897.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An argument on behalf of the primitive diet of man ... / by Frederic R. Lees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    dentition, shows that man was, from the beginning, adapted to eat the fruit of the trees of the garden* § 7. Experiments (as with St Martin) and experience show that every form of vegetal-food is as digestible, some more so, than the correspondent element found in flesh. Bodssingault found the different substances of the following table, pass in one hour from the intestinal canal into the blood, in the quantities indicated:— Table or Resoretion or Digestibility. Rice (81 per cent Albumen, 89 starch) = 4.20 Grammes.! Dry Cheese (70£ per cent oil) = 2.50 Bacon (96 per cent fat) ~ 0.88 Digestive Cacao seed (Cocoa, 48 per cent oil) ... = 1.77 Starch (yielding 2.37 carbon) = 5.26 Sugar (yielding 2.36 carbon) = 5.62 Beef, boiled and freed of fat = 1.41 Dry Casein (curd, or cheesy-principle) = 1.37 Dry Gelatin ||- = 4.40 Albumen (wbite-of-egg boiled) = 1.25 As to time of digestibility, Ereeichs found that fish and the flesh of old animals (whose cordage is more developed) form an almost homogeneous mass, very slowly acted upon by the digestive fluids from the surface inwards; the connective tissue having to be first dissolved, before the gastric solvent can reach the openings upon the primitive bundles beneath. In the stomach of a cat, four hours after eating, pieces of raw-beef were but slightly softened on the surface; and cooking made but 30 minutes difference, since the breaking up of the tissues was counteracted by the coagulation of the albumen. In an abundant diet of flesh, large numbers of muscular fibres are found unchanged in the faeces. According to the Dorpat experiments of Bidder and Schmidt, per- formed on a female Esthonian peasant who had a gastric-fistula m the left side, between the cartilages of the ninth and tenth ribs, the secretion of the digestive-face was 3libs daily. When mixed with the saliva, it is always either neutralized or alkalized, but when ob- tained from the stomach directly, by irritating the mucous mem- brane with peas, Schroeder J obtained a clear acid juice, containing free-hydrochloric acid. The gastric juice holds in solution nearly 46 parts per 1000 of the following solid constituents (the remaining 954- parts being water). * Other analogies in favor of Vegetarianism will be given farther on. f 1 Gramme = (equals) 15£ grains Troy (less .62). 1 Kilogramme = 2ibs 3 oz. 4 dwt. Avoird. (plus .17). J Succi gastrici humaui Vis digestiva, etc. Dorpat, 1853. 11 Gelatin is hardly food; being incapable of nourishment, and slowly combusted.