and assimilation.  Other aid it was supposed to lend, by stimulating the function of nutrition to renewed energy.  Later investigations have proved that it exercises a yet more important influence as an arrester of metamorphosis.  It was on arriving at this conclusion, that Dr. Boecker was led to institute a series of careful experiments to determine the influence of water on the physical economy, and the real value of salt, sugar, coffee, tea, and other condiments, as articles of food.  “The experimenter appears to have used the utmost precision, and details so conscientiously the mode adopted of making his estimates, that additional knowledge may perhaps alter the conclusions drawn, but can never diminish the value of the experiments.”  They are not open to the objections of mistaken sensations, and honest, though ludicrous, misapprehension of fallible symptoms, to which the testing of drugs homeopathically is liable, and of which another instance has just occurred in London, in the “proving” of the new medicinal agent, gonoine.  They rather resemble in accuracy a quantitative, as well as a qualitative, analysis.  We will cite first the experiments on tea, and quote from the interesting narrative of Dr. Chambers.

“After Dr. Boecker had determined by some preliminary trials what quantity of food and drink was just enough to satiate his appetite without causing loss of weight to his body,—­that is to say, was sufficient to cover exactly the necessary outgoings of the organism,—­he proceeded to special experiments, in which, during periods of twenty-four hours, he took the amount of victuals ascertained by the former trials.

“The first set of the first series of experiments consists of seven observations, of twenty-four hours’ duration each, in the months of July and August, with three barely sufficient meals per diem, in quantities as nearly equal each day as could be managed, and only spring-water to drink.  The second set comprises the same number of observations in August, September, and October, under similar circumstances, except that infusion of tea, drunk cold, was taken instead of plain water.

“Each day there are carefully recorded” qualitative and quantitative analyses of the excretions,—­estimates of “the amount of insensible perspiration, and of expired carbonic acid,—­the quickness of respiration,—­the beats of the pulse,—­together with accurate notes of the duration of bodily exercise in the open air, the loss of weight of the whole body, the general feelings, and the circumstances, thermometric, barometric, and meteoric, under which the observations are taken.

“A second series of seventeen experiments of equal duration were made, and at a different time of year, so as to answer the question, which might arise, as to whether the season made any difference.”

In these experiments similar observations and records are made as previously, “under the three following circumstances, namely:  while taking tea as an ordinary drink, on the days immediately following the leaving it off, and on other days when it was not taken.”