Volume 2

Letters to brother John, on life, health, and disease / [Edward Johnson].

  • Johnson, Edward, 1785-1862
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters to brother John, on life, health, and disease / [Edward Johnson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    259/342 (page 233)
    ] P y these two things must happen;—it must either be assimilated, or not assimilated; or, to use the com- mon, erroneous language, digested, or not digested. ‘fit be assimilated—that is, converted into blood— vessels than there ought to be. Let me illustrate again. Suppose the case of a healthy man—so healthy, that he cannot be healthier. Let us suppose the whole quantity of blood in his body to be thirty pounds. Let us further suppose, that, in twenty-four hours, one pound of his blood is lost in supplying the waste of the body. Now, if this man eat, in one day, so much food as will produce a pound and a half of blood, what follows? Why, that his blood has lost a pound of its volume, and gained a pound and a half in its stead: or, in other words, that the whole quantity of blood has been augmented by just ha/f a pound ;—so that his system now contains just half a pound too much. If this man were to go on adding half a pound to his stock of blood—and if it were possible for him to if Nature, foreseeing that her children would turn out to be gormandizers, had not, in some measure, guarded against the evil—it is plain that his blood-