Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

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.

    36/66 (page 36)
    per cent., and in those fed on sugar only G*3. Yet the faecal evacuations had been, in most cases, moderate. But the sugar, though it did not increase the fat, served towards maintaining the temperature of the body and the average production of carbonic acid. The quantity produced by these birds, on ordinary diet, was 13.2 grains per hour; during seven days’ starvation, it was 6*65 grains per hour ; and during three days’ diet of sugar, 11*03 grains. In turtle-doves fed for six days on butter, the quantity of fat found after death was scarcely more than in those who had died on the diet of sugar without albumen; and the quantity of carbonic acid produced by them was 9-08 grains per hour. [Still these experiments of M. Letellier, though they may prove that sugar alone will not keep pigeons alive nor increase their fat, do not disprove that, under favorable circumstances, fat is formed from sugar. Such a transformation is proved, by the experiments of Huber and Milne Edwards on bees, which formed wax while feeding on pure honey; and to their evidence may now be added that of Grundlach.* He fed bees on sugar-candy in water, and they formed wax; from twenty pounds of honey, also, they formed a pound of wax.] In a controversial note on this and other subjects,f Liebig quotes a letter from M. Demesmay, w'ho states that the result of abstracting from the food of fifty-eight cows a certain quantity of oil-cake, which contains from 10 to 15 percent, of oil, and substituting for it an equal weight of beetroot-molasses, was a more rapid fattening and a more copious production of milk. And to these evidences of the transformation of saccharine into fatty substances, it may be added that butyric acid maybe formed in the fermentation of sugar, f and that M. Avequin,^ has no¬ ticed that the quantity of that crystalline w ax which forms on the exterior of the sugar-cane, (and which he has named Cerosia,) always bears an inverse propor¬ tion to the quantity of sugar within the cane. Production of fat in the animal body. Besides the experiments above men¬ tioned, others have been performed by M. Persoz and M. Boussingault. Those of the former,§ on the fattening of nine geese with maize, appear to prove that sometimes the weight of fat formed during the fattening exceeds the whole increase of weight of the body. He supposes, therefore, that the geese not only assi¬ milate all the oily matters of the maize, and transform some of its starch and sac¬ charine matter, but also transform a certain portion of their own tissues into fat. During the fattening, the blood becomes highly charged with oily matter, and much of its albumen disappears or is transformed. The experiments of M. BoussingaultH afford evidence that some nutritive substance analogous to fat must be contained in the food in order that the fatty substances of the secretions and tissues may be duly formed. Relation between food and excretions. M. Boussingault^j considers that he has proved that in three days a horse and a cow each discharged in excrement and urine (and the latter in milk also), from 356*5 to 418*5 grains less of nitrogen than they had taken in their food. This quantity, therefore, he supposes must have passed off in respiration and transpiration in the free state. [But it is only pre¬ sumed that the wTeight of the animals remained the same ; and both the food and excretions were analysed by samples, so that small errors wmuld be greatly mul¬ tiplied in the general result; and no account is taken of what may have been dis- * Geschichte der Beinen, 1842. t Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, Oct. 1843 t See last Report, p. 15. t I'1 Mulder’s Physiol. Scheikunde, p. 271. § Report of the Academie des Sciences, 12 Fevrier, 1844; in the Gazette M^dicale, 17 Fevr. I sus¬ pect that in that fatty degeneration of the muscles which takes place when they are not exercised, the change is not a removal of the muscular fibre and deposition of fat in its place, but a transforma¬ tion of the fibrine, of which one of the products is fat; that it is, therefore, a chemical not a nutritive process by which the change is effected. The nature of such a change is illustrated by Wurtz’s obser¬ vation (p. 4); and its occurrence is made very probable by the linear arrangement of the particles of fat, in the places of the former muscular fibres, on a plan different from that existing in any other form of fat. |1 Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Oct. 1844. Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Avril, 1844. Extract from M. Boussingault’s work ‘ Economic rurale dans ses rapports avec la Chimie, &c.’