A treatise on food and diet : with observations on the dietetical regimen suited for disordered states of the digestive organs : and an account of the dietaries of some of the principal metropolitan and other establishments for paupers, lunatics, criminals, children, the sick, &c / by Jonathan Pereira ; edited by Charles A. Lee.
- Jonathan Pereira
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on food and diet : with observations on the dietetical regimen suited for disordered states of the digestive organs : and an account of the dietaries of some of the principal metropolitan and other establishments for paupers, lunatics, criminals, children, the sick, &c / by Jonathan Pereira ; edited by Charles A. Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![ELEMENTS OF THE FOOD OF MAN. constituent Gold.,* and, more recently, Lead] and Arsenicum,\ have been declared to be constituents of organized bodies ; but there is reason, I think, to suspect some error in the observations. A living body has no power of forming elements, or of converting one elementary sub- stance into another ;\ and it therefore follows that the elements of which the body of an animal is composed must be the elements of its food. The essential constituents of the human body are thirteen ; and the same, therefore, must be the elements of our food.ll CHEMICAL ELEMENTS OF THE FOOD OF MAN. 1. Carbon 2. Hydrogen 3. Oxygen 4. Nitrogen 5. Phosphorus 6. Sulphur 7. Iron 8. Chlorine 9. Sodium 10. Calcium 11. Potassium 12. Magnesium 13. Fluorine These substances I now proceed to notice individually. 1. Carbon.—In the pure and crystallized state, carbon constitutes the diamond, a sub- * Several distinguished chemists have asserted the existence of gold in vegetables, (Chaptal, Elements of Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 442.) t According to Devergie, {Journal de Chimie Medicale,t. iv. 2de Serie, p. 591, 1833,) lead and copper are constituents of the bodies of man and other animals. t Orfila {Journ. de Chim. Med. t. v. 2de Ser. p. 632, 1839) asserts, that arsenicum is a constituent of the bones of man and other animals. But Dr. G. O. Rees, (Guy's Hospital Reports, No. xii.,) Messrs. Dan- ger and Flandrin, and the Commissioners appointed by the French Academy of Sciences, (Journal de Pharmaeie, t. xxiv. p. 423, Juillet, 1841,) have repeated his experiments without detecting it. % Dr. Prout (Phil. Trans. 1822, p. 377) asserts, that the lime found in the skeleton of the chick when it quits the shell, did not pre-exist in the recent egg: so that the only possible sources whence it could be derived are the shell and transmutation from other substances supposed to be elementary. But as the membrane in contact with the shell is never vascular, and as both the albumen and yolk contain, at the end of incubation, a considerable quantity of earthy matter, which it is to be supposed would have been appropriated to the bone in preference to that derived from a remote source, Dr. Prout doubts whether the origin or source of the lime is referable to the shell. Indeed, it is tolerably clear, that he believes in the capability of the vital energies to effect the transmutation of some of the so-called ele- ments ; and in a more recent work, (On the Nature and Treatment of Stomach and Urinary Diseases, p. xxxvi. 3d edit. 1840,) he expresses himself more decidedly on this point. Some imagine, he observes, that the mineral incidental principles of organized beings are generated during the vital process; while others maintain that they are derived ab externo. My belief is, that, under certain extraordinary circumstances, the vital agents can form what ,we now consider as elements ; but that, in ordinary, such elements are chiefly derived ab externo, in conjunction with the alimentary principles; and in another part of the same work (p. xxix.) he speaks of the assimilating organs being able, under extraordinary circumstances, to decompose principles which are still considered as elementary ; nay, to form azote or carbon. These opinions, however well founded, in no way affect the accuracy of the proposition which I have above laid down in the text; for Dr. Prout himself, in his Bridgewater Treatise (Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion considered with reference to Natural Theology, p. 431, 1834) lays down a similar one. No organic agent, he says, has the power either of creating material elements, or of changing one such element into another. His opinions merely affect the question of the elementary nature of some of the substances which chemists have not hitherto been able to decompose. At p. 432 of the last quoted work, he observes, that while it is thus denied that organized beings possess the power, either to create or to change, in the strict acceptance of these terms ; it has been admitted to be exceed- ingly probable, that the organic agent is, within certain limits, qualified to compose and decompose many substances which are now viewed as elements ; and that the organic agent does thus apparently form and transmute these imagined elements. II Traces of manganese have been detected in the blood; but I have not included this metal as an essential constituent of the human system. In some countries, siliciuus and aluminous substances are eaten, but they can scarcely be denominated aliments ; and I have not, therefore, inserted silicon and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21146792_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
