Combined labour necessary for the future progress of medicine : an address to the British Medical Association delivered at Chester, Aug. 8, 1866 / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D.

  • Bennett, John Hughes, 1812-1875.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Combined labour necessary for the future progress of medicine : an address to the British Medical Association delivered at Chester, Aug. 8, 1866 / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    1 2d. The great impulse communicated to animal chemistry in recent times dates from the labours of those who, by careful analysis, have followed the chemical transformations which plants and animals undergo during their development, growth, and decay. These have shown the relations which exist between the atmosphere, the soil, and the plant—what the latter takes from the two former, and what it gives to the animal who feeds upon it. In the same manner that plants can only grow in those soils which contain the substances necessary to form their tissues, so animals can only be nourished upon those compounds which contain the chemical elements they themselves require. All this being ascertained, what next interests us is the relation which exists between the supply of food and waste of the tissues during their exercise. Viewed chemically, food may be regarded as a mixture of albumen, fat, and mineral matter, all of which pervade the economy, although the first is most abundant in the fibrous tissues, the second in the adipose and gland tissues, and the third in the bones and teeth. These substances, prepared by the molecular disintegrative process formerly alluded to, are but little changed chemically before passing into the tissues. But in leaving them in order to be excreted, remarkable chemical combinations and decompositions occur, whereby they produce different compounds, such as carbonic acid, water, urea, numerous organic salts, and so on. The nature of these chemical actions within the body is not yet fully understood ; so that, although we know the composition of the ingesta and egesta, how the one is transformed into the other by the animal is not so clear. The view put forth by Liebig—namely, that food should be regarded as nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous—the former being sanguigenous or flesh-forming, and the latter respiratory or heat- giving—has long appeared tome erroneous on histological grounds. Every tissue requires both principles. Even chemists them- selves have shown by experiment that the idea of the tissues being oxidised during ar.tion, and yielding a proportionate