The functions of food in the body : does either bodily energy or bodily heat come from the food? / by A. Rabagliati.

  • Rabagliati, A. (Andrea Carlo Francesco), 1843-
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The functions of food in the body : does either bodily energy or bodily heat come from the food? / by A. Rabagliati. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/56 page 14
    of a contemptible minority, among whom nevertheless, I most emphatically range myself. About the special phase of the question as it affects the action of the brain and the function of thought; a most remarkable oversight appears to have been committed. Unlike all other organs of the body, the circulation of the blood, when it reaches the brain ceases to be under the government of the heart and its mechanism, and comes under the government either of the respiration, or that portion of the nervous system which governs respiration. That is to say that, whereas circulation in the stomach and liver, and pancreas, and spleen, and kidneys, and even in the membranes of the brain, moves at the rate of 60, 70, 80, or 90 times a minute ; that of the brain moves only at the rate of from 15 to 18 times a minute. The muscles are the organs of mechanical work ; the brain is the organ of mental work. It has been known for 150 years that the circulation in the brain moves with the respiration, while that in the muscles moves with the blood circulation. How is it that this fact has never been made use of by physiologists ? Their refusal to use it, or their blindness as to its meaning is almost certainly a great part of the reason why the writers above mentioned have been compelled to make the poverty-stricken admission already quoted. How is it possible that the functional
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