General debility and defective nutrition : their causes, consequences, and treatment / by Alfred Smee.

  • Alfred Smee
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General debility and defective nutrition : their causes, consequences, and treatment / by Alfred Smee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion of cluiiiged matter or excels of material. Every man may be therefore found, at every time and nnder every circumstance, either in tlie state of heaUh, disease^ debihty, redundancy, or o])pres- sion. 8. Debility is now our theme; and as a prelimi- nary step to its study, it is desirable to take a glance at the fuel or food which man uses, the changes which that food undergoes to produce heat, physical strength, and nervous action, and to notice the final products of these changes, with the mode in wliich they are cast off from the system. 9. Every part of this obviously necessary in- quiry to the medical practitioner is beset with overwhelming difficulties; of some parts of the subject we are almost in total ignorance. We are actually, at the bedside of the patient, obliged to form our conclusion by a review of all the general features, as we are quite unable to follow the various changes of the organism, and trace their irregidariiies, from the taking of food to the excre- tion of the wasted products. 10. The food of man is compounded of twelve elements : hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, potassium, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, and calcium; and Ihongh no philo«0[)her doubts the possibility of these nndecom- posed bodies consisting of others, yet chemistry