Foods for the fat : a treatise on corpulency, with dietary for its cure / by Nathaniel Edward Davies.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Foods for the fat : a treatise on corpulency, with dietary for its cure / by Nathaniel Edward Davies. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![FOOD : ITS USES AND ULTIMATE ELIMINATION. 42. Popularly, we speak of the products we eat to supply the wants of the system as 'food' and 'drink,' and the ordinary individual does not care to analyze further the meaning of the words; but, to the chemist, they have a far broader meaning, and in his hands their different properties and uses in the system are worked out, and in this way, by the light of his knowledge, we are able to show what effects on the animal economy certain foods produce, either for good or harm. 43. The chemist broadly divides foods into two classes. These are known as The Nitrogenous and the Non-Nitrogenous. The nitrogenous class of foods are those which form the essential basis of structures possessing active or living proper- ties, and the non-nitrogenous principles may be looked upon as supplying the source of power—in other words, if man were looked upon as a steam-engine, the nitrogenous food would form the iron, brass and works of the engine, and the non- nitrogenous would be the coal or any other fuel used in generating power. 44. Now what constitutes nitrogenous food ] The answer is: meat of all kinds, gelatine, eggs, milk, and certain con- stituents of vegetables, such as gluten, vegetable fibrine and casein e. 45. As life consists in the constant renovation and decay of living tissue, and as living tissue, i.e., the body, is made up of nitrogenous matter, it is therefore absolutely necessary for all the operations of life, and is the instrument of living action, and out of it are formed bone, muscle, nerves, etc.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21901648_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
