Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].
- Ridge, Benjamin
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
108/534 (page 46)
![to the sulphuretted hydrogen we owe our immunity from eruptive diseases. It is to the eombustion of all these, and their prolific and wonderful union, that caloric is so largely produced, independently of any other source, and that the fluid elements of the body are maintained at a given temperature. It is to the wise laws which rule over and govern all these that make man the varied being he is. It is to this intestine and its contents that the different idiosyn- crasies of men are due. It is to this, and to these more than anything else, that our forms and shapes are so different and our minds so varied. It is to those laws which regulate the size of the colon and to its energetic actions, with the ready evolution of the gases and as rapid passing out of beces in due propor- tion, that our stout and fat people derive all their con- sistence and substance, even to excess. It is clear they have more fluid, and, having this. Inspissate more fat; having these, they get excess of caloric, which is more easily and readily excited to pers])iration exter- nally, and consequently a greater absorption and con- densation of effete matter into the general alimentary canal. Equally clear is it, that those whose colons are small, narrow, and contracted, are thin, and are gene- rally conserved or constipated in their habits. Thus, then, it is seen that a perfectly opposite idio- syncrasy is produced. Unless this conservatism hap- pened, they woidd suffer in brain power; but Nature is too wise to allow the gift of reason to be tampered with, or to fall short in any varied Idiosyncrasies. Thus we see that when there is excess of gases, they make substance, and that substance is fat. Where there is not sufficient to make excess of fat, the gases](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2807256x_0108.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
