Diseases of metabolism and of the blood : animal parasites, toxicology / ed. by Richard C. Cabot ... An authorized translation from "Die deutsche klinik" under the general editorial supervision of Julius L. Salinger, M. D. With one colored plate and fifty-eight illustrations in the text.
- Richard Clarke Cabot
- Date:
- 1906
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Diseases of metabolism and of the blood : animal parasites, toxicology / ed. by Richard C. Cabot ... An authorized translation from "Die deutsche klinik" under the general editorial supervision of Julius L. Salinger, M. D. With one colored plate and fifty-eight illustrations in the text. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![amount of nourishment which will most surely produce a loss of fat without impairing the muscular condition have been carried on for years, and reached their acme in the debates at the Congress of Internal Medicine in the year 1885, and in the literary war waged between Ebstein and Oertel. The views were based rather upon theory than upon practical experience. Investigations regarding metabolism during antifat cures had not yet been attempted. A few years later when, independently of one another, F. Ilirschfeld and v. Noorden-Dapper worked out this problem experimentally, contradictions at first resulted. The former found it almost impossible to produce a loss of fatty tissue without a simultaneous decrease of the body albumin. The other two authors proved by numerous investigations that this goal may be reached, and oven without special difficulty, provided the leap from a plentiful diet to one of abstinence is not too sudden. All the authors who later devoted them- selves to similar researches have confirmed this. The satisfactory result of these studies of metabolism has had, it appears to me, great influence upon the practical work of physicians, and has encouraged them—certainly not to the detriment of the patient—to attempt careful antifat cures, where pre- viously they refrained from them because in every antifat cure—even if only transiently—the supply of body albumin was jeopardized. According to other investigations in metabolism as well as in my own, and also according to later researches of Dapper and myself, careful planning of the ingestion of nour- ishment so that the albumin supply of the body will not be decreased may obviate this danger, but by no means removes all other difficulties. For, in numerous cases, it is evident that the muscular power of the patient must not only be maintained but increased. This end also may be practically achieved, and will crown the success of a thoughtfully carried out antifat cure. It pre- supposes that the patient must become accustomed, from the beginning of the treatment, to an increasing amount of bodily exercise. We must utilize the well-known physiological fact that, if we exercise a muscle, it gains not only in strengt]] but also in bulk. It is true that investigations of metabo- lism in which the combustion of albumin has been tested during dietetic antifat cures with and without systematic, muscular exercise have not yet been carried out; but we hardly require them, for clinical experience demon- strates how readily strength and size of muscles may be increased during dietetic antifat cures. Formerly (in opposition to the facts) we regarded the preservation of the stability of the organic albumin in antifat cures as difficult, even impos- sible. Yet, at the same time, it was not doubted that by forced feeding it was very easy to accelerate not only the formation of adipose tissue but also of the animate protoplasm of the body, and particularly to strengthen the muscles. The proposition, however, is by no means so simple as it appears. That albumin metabolism is diminished and N-containing material accumu- lates in the body on over-feeding with albuminates, particularly with fat, and to a still greater degree with carbohydrates, had been long known from animal experiments by Bischoff and C. v. Voit and their pupils. Investigations in man—especially the researches of Bleibtreu and Krug—have confirmed this, and Bornstein and Lüthje in their latest studies in metabolism have demon-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21226441_0076.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
