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The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1910
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]». Краткое содержание книги:
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 01 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 03 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 04 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 05 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 07 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 08 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 10 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 12 — Modern History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 17 — Poetry and Drama от Неизвестный
The world's greatest books от Mee, Arthur, 1875-1943, joint editor & Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir, 1871-1949, joint editor & McClure, S. S. (Samuel Sidney), 1857-1949, joint editor
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 19 — Travel and Adventure от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index от Неизвестный
How beautifully simple then, by the aid of these discoveries, appears the process of nutrition in animals, the formation of their organs, in which vitality chiefly resides. Those vegetable constituents which are used by animals to form blood contain the essential ingredients of blood ready formed. In point of fact, vegetables produce in their organism the blood of all animals; for the carnivora, in consuming the blood and flesh of the graminivora, consume, strictly speaking, the vegetable principles which have served for the nourishment of the latter. In this sense we may say the animal organism gives to blood only its form; and, further, that it is incapable of forming blood out of other compounds which do not contain the chief ingredients of that fluid.
Animal and vegetable life are, therefore, closely related, for the first substance capable of affording nutriment to animals is the last product of the creative energy of vegetables. The seemingly miraculous in the nutritive power of vegetables disappears in a great degree, for the production of the constituents of blood cannot appear more surprising than the occurrence of the principal ingredient of butter in palm-oil and of horse-fat and train-oil in certain of the oily seeds.
IV.—Food the Fuel of Life
We have still to account for the use in food of substances which are destitute of nitrogen but are known to be necessary to animal life. Such substances are starch, sugar, gum, and pectine. In all of these we find a great excess of carbon, with oxygen and hydrogen in the same proportion as water. They therefore add an excess of carbon to the nitrogenised constituents of food, and they cannot possibly be employed in the production of blood, because the nitrogenised compounds contained in the food already contain exactly the amount of carbon which is required for the production of fibrine and albumen. Now, it can be shown that very little of the excess of this carbon is ever expelled in the form either of solid or liquid compounds; it must be expelled, therefore, in the gaseous state. In short, these compounds are solely expended in the production of animal heat, being converted by the oxygen of the air into carbonic acid and water. The food of carnivorous animals does not contain non-nitrogenised matters, so that the carbon and hydrogen necessary for the production of animal heat are furnished in them from the waste of their tissues.
The transformed matters of the organs are obviously unfit for the further nourishment of the body—that is, for the increase or reproduction of the mass. They pass through the absorbent and lymphatic vessels into the veins, and their accumulation in these would soon put a stop to the nutritive process were it not that the blood has to pass through a filtering apparatus, as it were, before reaching the heart. The venous blood, before returning to the heart, is made to pass through the liver and the kidneys, which separate from it all substances incapable of contributing to nutrition. The new compounds containing the nitrogen of the transformed organs, being utterly incapable of further application in the system, are expelled from the body. Those which contain the carbon of the transformed tissues are collected in the gall-bladder as bile, a compound of soda which, being mixed with water, passes through the duodenum and mixes with chyme. All the soda of the bile, and ninety-nine-hundredths of the carbonaceous matter which it contains, retain the capacity of re-absorption by the absorbents of the small and large intestines—a capacity which has been proved by direct experiment.
The globules of the blood, which in themselves can be shown to take no share in the nutritive process, serve to transport the oxygen which they give up in their passage through the capillary vessels. Here the current of oxygen meets with the carbonaceous substances of the transformed tissues, and converts their carbon into carbonic acid, their hydrogen into water. Every portion of these substances which escapes this process of oxidation is sent back into the circulation in the form of bile, which by degrees completely disappears.
It is obvious that in the system of the graminivora, whose food contains relatively so small a proportion of the constituents of blood, the process of metamorphosis in existing tissues, and consequently their restoration or reproduction, must go on far less rapidly than in the carnivora. Otherwise, a vegetation a thousand times as luxuriant would not suffice for their sustenance. Sugar, gum, and starch, which form so large a proportion of their food, would then be no longer necessary to support life in these animals, because in that case the products of waste, or metamorphosis of organised tissues, would contain enough carbon to support the respiratory process.
When exercise is denied to graminivorous and omnivorous animals this is tantamount to a deficient supply of oxygen. The carbon of the food, not meeting with a sufficient supply of oxygen to consume it, passes into other compounds containing a large excess of carbon—or, in other words, fat is produced. Fat is thus an abnormal production, resulting from a disproportion of carbon in the food to that of the oxygen respired by the lungs or absorbed by the skin. Wild animals in a state of nature do not contain fat. The production of fat is always a consequence of a deficient supply of oxygen, for oxygen is absolutely indispensable for the dissipation of excess of carbon in the food.
V.—Animal Life-Chemistry
The substances of which the food of man is composed may be divided into two classes—into nitrogenised and non-nitrogenised. The former are capable of conversion into blood, the latter incapable of this transformation. Out of those substances which are adapted to the formation of blood are formed all the organised tissues. The other class of substances in the normal state of health serve to support the process of respiration. The former may be called the plastic elements of nutrition; the latter, elements of respiration.
Among the former we may reckon—vegetable fibrine, vegetable albumen, vegetable casein, animal flesh, animal blood.
Among the elements of respiration in our food are—fat, starch, gum, cane sugar, grape-sugar, sugar of milk, pectine, bassorine, wine, beer, spirits.
The nitrogenised constituents of vegetable food have a composition identical with that of the constituents of the blood.
No nitrogenised compound the composition of which differs from that of fibrine, albumen, and casein, is capable of supporting the vital process in animals.
The animal organism undoubtedly possesses the power of forming from the constituents of its blood the substance of its membranes and cellular tissue, of the nerves and brain, of the organic part of cartilages and bones. But the blood must be supplied to it ready in everything but its form—that is, in its chemical composition. If this is not done, a period is put to the formation of blood, and, consequently, to life.
The whole life of animals consists of a conflict between chemical forces and the vital power. In the normal state of the body of an adult these stand in equilibrium: that is, there is equilibrium between the manifestations of the causes of waste and the causes of supply. Every mechanical or chemical agency which disturbs the restoration of this equilibrium is a cause of disease.
Death is that condition in which chemical or mechanical powers gain the ascendancy, and all resistance on the part of the vital force ceases. This resistance never entirely departs from living tissues during life. Such deficiency in resistance is, in fact, a deficiency in resistance to the action of the oxygen of the atmosphere.
Disease occurs when the sum of vital force, which tends to neutralise all causes of disturbance, is weaker than the acting cause of disturbance.