Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget].
- James Paget
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
35/66 (page 35)
![THE PROGRESS OF HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. NUTRITION. In its chemical relations. Use of gelatine in food. The Amsterdam com¬ mission* for determining the nutritive properties of gelatine, as obtained from bones by steam, and used in large quantities in “ economic soup” in Dutch public institutions, have confirmed the conclusion of the commission of the Paris Institute, that it has had hardly any nutritive properties when taken alone; and, in regard to the important point left unsettled by the French commission, namely, whether, when added to other kinds of food, gelatine contributes to the total amount of nutriment, they have also come to a negative conclusion. None of the three dogs to whom considerable quantities of it were, for several long periods, given both alone and in connexion with bread aud potato-parings, was found to have derived the least benefit, or to have gained any increase of weight from it. [The experiments were accurately enough made, and warrant the conclusions, as far as “ economic soup” and dogs are concerned. But they are so opposed to the results of common observation of the nutritive value of jellies and other like gelatinous food, that some fallacy must be suspected in both these and those of the French commission. Either dogs are improper subjects for such experiments, or, more probably, the mode of preparation decomposes the gelatine. The action of the hot steam to which the bones, already boiled, are subjected for about seven hours in each of several days, may effect a part of the change by which, when it is complete, gelatine loses its power of setting, and in which the arrangement of its elements may be so altered, that they cannot be reconstructed in a nutritive form.] Transformations of the sugar in food. M. Chossatf found that of many birds fed on sugar alone, none lived more than sixteen days; and he thought he observed that in those which had copious bilious evacuations, no unusual quantity of fat was accumulated in the body; but in those in which these discharges did not occur, fat was abundantly formed. He assumed, therefore, that the sugar is, under vary¬ ing circumstances, sometimes converted into the constituents of fat, and sometimes into those of bile. But the experiments of M. Letellier,}: which were more care¬ fully made, contradict these. Their results were, that among seven turtle-doves fed on cane-sugar and bread with water, (coagulated albumen having been added, in two cases, after the sixth day,) not one possessed, at the time of death, the ave¬ rage quantity of fat: their general average of fat was nearly 60 per cent, less than that found in healthy individuals, i. e. the average in health was found to be 15 8 * Het. Instituut, No. 2, 1843, pp. 97-114 ; imperfectly reported in the account of the sitting of the Acad^mie des Sciences, 11 Mars ; in the Gazette Medicale, 16 Mars 1844. t Gazette Medicale, 21 Oct. 1843, from the Acad, des Sciences, Seance du 16 Oct. t Annalesde Chimie et de Physique, Juin ; and Ann. des Sciences Nat., Juillet, 1844. 4](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30385611_0035.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
