Chapter III Alimentary Energetics
Various Problems of Alimentation. § 1. Food the source of Energy and Matter. The two forms of Energy afforded by Food—Vital Energy, Thermal Energy. Food the source of Heat. The rôle of Heat.—§ 2. Measure of the output of Energy—by the Calometric Method—by the Chemical Method.—§ 3. The regular type of Food, Biothermogenic, and the irregular type, Thermogenic.—§ 4. Food considered as the source of Heat. The Law of Surfaces. The limits of Isodynamics.—§ 5. Plastic rôle of Food. Preponderance of Nitrogenous Foods.
Among the problems on which energetics has thrown a vivid light we have mentioned alimentation, muscular contraction, and, more general still, the intermittence of vital functional activity. We shall begin with the study of alimentation.
The Different Problems of Alimentation.—What is a food? In what does alimentation consist? The dictionary of the Académie will give us our first answer. It tells us that the word food is applied to “every kind of matter, whatever may be its nature, which habitually serves or may serve for nutrition.” This is very well put, but here again we must know what nutrition is, and that is not a simple matter; in fact, it practically means whatever is usually placed on the table in a civilized and polished society. But it is just the profound reasons for this traditional practice that we are trying to discover.
The problem of alimentation may be looked at in a thousand ways. It is culinary, no doubt, and gastronomic; but it is also economical and social, agricultural, fiscal, hygienic, medical, and even moral. But first and foremost, it is physiological. It comprises and assumes the knowledge of the general composition of foods, of their transformations in the digestive apparatus, and their comparative utility in the maintenance and the sound functional activity of the organism. To this first group of subjects for our discussion are attached others relating to the effects of inanition, of insufficient alimentation, and of over-feeding. And in order to throw light on all these aspects of the problem of alimentation, we have to lay bare the most intimate and delicate reactions by which the organism is maintained and recruited, and, in the words of a celebrated physiologist, “to penetrate into the kitchen of vital phenomena.” And here neither Apicius, nor Brillat-Savarin, nor Berchoux, nor the moralists, nor the economists are of any use to us as guides. We must appeal to the scientists, who, following the example of Lavoisier, Berzelius, Regnault, and Liebig, have applied to the study of living beings the resources of general science, and have thus founded chemical biology.
This branch of science developed considerably in the second half of the nineteenth century. It has now its methods, its technique, its chairs at the universities, its laboratories, and its literature. It has particularly applied itself to the study of the “material changes” or the metabolism of living beings, and with that object in view it has done two things. In the first place, it has determined the composition of the constituent materials of the organism; then analyzing qualitatively and quantitatively all that penetrates into that organism in a given time—that is to say, all the alimentary or respiratory ingesta, and all that issues from the organism, i.e., all the excreta, all the egesta,—it has drawn up nutritive balance sheets, corresponding to the various conditions of life, whether naturally or artificially created. And thus we can determine the alimentary régimes which give too much, and which give too little, and which finally restore equilibrium.
We do not propose to give a detailed account of this scientific movement. This may be done in monographs. All we wish to indicate here is the most general result of these laborious researches—that is to say, the laws and the doctrines which are derived from them, and the theories to which they have given birth. It is by this alone that they are brought into relation with general science, and may therefore interest the reader. The facts of detail are never lacking to the historian; it is more profitable to show the movement of ideas. The theories of alimentation bring into conflict very different conceptions of the vital functional activity. And here we find a confused medley of opinions on which it is not without interest to endeavour to throw some light.