The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 281 pages of information about The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28.

The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 281 pages of information about The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28.
I lift my hat to M.D. and trust that, as I don’t know him, the somewhat jarring difference that I have with his views will not be put down to personal feeling.  A.A.  Voysey has put my first objection quite well from the layman’s point of view.  He says “there is no agreement between those who have been taught physiology.”  This is true.  Playfair’s full diet is different from Voit’s.  Voit’s is different from Atwater’s.  Atwater’s is different from Chittenden’s.
The custom of reducing the diets to calories, inasmuch as it introduces a false theory, has had a disastrous effect on progress, and has been a great hindrance to the attainment of knowledge.  If the coal in the fireplace were the cause of the heat of the fire (but is it?), there is no analogy between the elevation of the heat by hundreds and even thousands of degrees when the fire is lighted, and the elevation of half-a-degree or a degree which occurs when food is taken into the body, especially when we remember that a similar elevation of temperature occurs when work is performed by means of the body without eating or drinking at all.
It is quite evident to every clear seer, or it ought to be, that the force of animal life or zoo-dynamic is the cause of the heat of the body, just as the electric force is the cause of the liberation of heat through the battery, and the chemic force is the cause of the heat of the fire, and that zoo-dynamic and electro-dynamic and chemico-dynamic are forms or species or varieties of the one omnipotent and eternal energy by which all things in this universe consist.  The aggregate of all the particular forces makes up the eternal energy which is one.  They are all species of the one, but it is convenient and even necessary for our limited intellects to consider them separately, for the indefinite number of the facts and also their intricacy and complexity stagger and overwhelm us unless we do; and indeed they stagger us even when we try to treat them and take them up separately for consideration and examination.  But now for the proof of A.A.  Voysey’s statement.
Ranke found he required 100 grammes proteid; fat 100 grammes; carbo-hydrate 240 grammes to keep him going.  These he could have got from 9 oz. of lean meat or 250 grammes, 18 oz. of bread or 500 grammes, 12 oz. or 55 grammes of butter and 1 oz of fat (I do not, of course, suggest that it would have been wise for him to get them so).  Moleschott’s demands are:  proteid 120 grammes, fat 90 grammes, carbo-hydrate 333 grammes.  Voit demands for hard work:  proteid 145 grammes, fat 100 grammes, carbo-hydrate 450 grammes.  Atwater demands for hard work the following:—­proteid 177 grammes, fat 250 grammes, carbo-hydrate 650 grammes.  Horace Fletcher, we are told by Professor Chittenden, took for a time, when everything was accurately measured and weighed:  proteid 44.9 grammes, fat 38 grammes, carbo-hydrate 253 grammes.  Cornaro lived on
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The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.