The elements of the science of nutrition / by Graham Lusk.

  • Graham Lusk
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The elements of the science of nutrition / by Graham Lusk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spiration, he will only deceive his patient and never cure him.” Aphorism III reads: “He only who knows how much and when the body does more or less insensibly perspire will be able to discern when or what is to be added or taken away either for the recovery or preservation of health.” Nicholas Le Fevre in his Traite’ de Chimie (Paris, 1660) noticed the increase in the weight of metals after calcining them and believed this due to the fixation of a gaseous element. He called it esprit universel, and applied the same conception to the respiration of animals. In 1668 John Mayow, writing in London, stated that the atmos- phere contained a constituent which supported combustion as well as animal life. (Nitro-aerial particles or fire air particles.) The modern era of the science of nutrition was opened by Lavoi- sier in 1780. He was the first to apply the balance and the thermom- eter to the investigation of the phenomena of life, and he declared “La vie est une fonction chimique.” The work of today is but the continuation of that done a century and more ago. Lavoisier and Laplace made experiments on animal heat and respiration. The great German chemist Liebig received his early training in Paris, residing there in 1822. Liebig’s conception of the processes of nutrition fired the genius of Voit to the painstaking researches which laid the foundation of his Munich school. These have been repeated and extended by his pupils, of whom Rubner is chief, and by others the world over. Thus the knowledge often transmitted personally from the master to the pupil, to be in turn elaborated, had its seed in the intellect of Lavoisier. It was he who first discovered the true importance of oxygen gas, to which he gave its present name. He declared that life processes were those of oxidation, with the resulting elimination of heat. He believed that oxygen was the cause of the decomposition of a fluid brought to the lungs, and that hydrogen and carbon were produced in this fluid and then united with oxygen to form water and carbon dioxid. He said that perspiration regulated the quantity of heat lost from the body and that digestion replenished the blood with the materials eliminated through respiration and perspiration. It was he who first made respiration experiments on man, the results of which are briefly described in a letter to Black,1 1 Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Edinburgh, 1871, p. 189.