Diseases of the stomach and intestines : a manual of clinical therapeutics for the student and practitioner / by Dujardin-Beaumetz ; tr. from the 4th French ed. by E.P. Hurd.

  • Georges Octave Dujardin-Beaumetz
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the stomach and intestines : a manual of clinical therapeutics for the student and practitioner / by Dujardin-Beaumetz ; tr. from the 4th French ed. by E.P. Hurd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    of gastric juice, but which furnishes the economy only aliments insufficient for the nutrition. Muller has in fact shown that in animals, extract of meat does not nourish, and Kimmerich has gone even further, he has shown that the animal fed exclusively with this extract, dies sooner than one subjected to a rigorous abstinence. You will, then, use these extracts with moderation, and as far as possi- ble employ genuine broth, which presents great advantages over these preparations.10 In this study of meat broth, we have examined only one of the sides of the question from an alimentary point of view, the liquid product; there remains for consideration the solid part, the meat itself, which may be utilized. The nutritive value of boiled meat is considerable, and almost equal to that of roast meat, nevertheless it is greatly inferior to it in taste, being much less relished; hence it is necessary, in my opinion, as far as possible, especially in hospital practice, to substitute roast for boiled meat in the dietary of patients. In this respect the English are ahead of us. This is without doubt the nation that consumes the most meat, and is the most particular in regard to the way its meats are cooked. In their hospitals the English discard the use of boiled meat, and prefer those immense chunks of roast meat with which you are all acquainted. Here is an example which we in France ought to follow, and instead of boiled meat, the habitual ration, we ought to eat more roast meat. Finally blood, that flowing flesh as Bordeau calls it, has been ad- vised in the treatment of stomach affections, and we see at the present day great numbers of persons resorting to the slaughter houses of our great cities to drink the blood as it comes warm from the slaughtered animals. This repugnant practice has no good scientific warrant, and nothing either in the domain of physiological research or of clinical dis- covery goes to show that blood is superior as a food or as a medicine to the flesh of animals.11 Of late there have been introduced into therapeutics, alimentary pow- ders made with dried blood, and under the name of hcemopulvine. Paul Bert and Eegnard have given vogue to a preparation of their own. Guer- der, moreover, has shown all the advantages derivable from desiccated blood in forced alimentation, and we shall return to this subject, under the head of gavage.* We come now to aliments of vegetal origin. Legumes and cereals, along with fruits, constitute the principal aliments of this group. The cereals occupy the first rank, and, it must be admitted, consti- tute, like milk and eggs, an almost complete aliment. Wheat, in fact, * [See Guerder's articles, reproduced by me, in the Therapeutic Gazette, 1883, p. 452, and 1884, p. 49. Trans.]
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