Protein and nutrition : an investigation / M. Hindhede.

  • Mikkel Hindhede
Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Protein and nutrition : an investigation / M. Hindhede. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/236 page 18
    500 grs. of carbo-hydrates began to put on flesh. During one day the increase of flesh was as much as 78 grs., so that only 122 grs. of flesh was used up. That means that the output for 28 kgs.—the weight of the dog at the time—was 0-15 gr. nitrogen per kilogram, while the dog, according to Voit’s second assertion, ought to have been brought into equilibrium only by 0-17 X 21 = 0-42 gr. nitrogen per kilogram. This proves Voit’s second contention to be absolutely incorrect. The faet is that Voit had not rightly appreciated the immense value of the carbo-hydrates in replacing protein. As we shall see hereafter, a great number of equilibrium experiments have failed because sufficient carbo-hydrates (calories) have not been given. If the non-nitrogenous food- stuffs do not yield calories enough, it is but natural that the organism should consume protein. With which we will take our leave of Voit’s dogs. I hope that the reader will have understood what a misleading influence these creatures have exercised on Voit, first of all, and afterwards on his contemporaries and on posterity. And yet there are no animals—and, one might add, no men in the whole physiological world—which have acquired anything approaching the farne accorded those dogs. It is impossible to avoid them when scanning the pages of any treatise on the physiology of nutrition. Even in popular publications they are to be encountered again and again. And wherefore ? Simply because those dogs constituted the foundation stone of that which has been, up to the present, the accepted doctrine of nutrition. And now, because the foundation was faulty, the doctrine itself has collapsed.
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