Popular Books on Natural Science Part 2

To explain this, however, it is necessary to turn our attention to another thing, no less a miracle than nutrition itself, viz., what in scientific language is called "Exchange of Matter." To all of you it is a well-known fact, that nothing in the human body remains even for a moment in the same state; but that in every part of the body a continued exchange takes place. Air is breathed in and exhaled again; but the air exhaled is different from the air inhaled. By this process an exchange of matter has taken place; new matter has entered the body and waste matter has been thrown out.

This exchange of matter--we shall speak more about it at another opportunity--is a princ.i.p.al necessity for the body and its functions; it consists in the main of an incessant change, by which our body is forced to cast out matter that formed parts of it, and is therefore obliged, in order to compensate for the loss, to take in new matter. Hence there is no exaggeration in the expression, "Man is continually renewing himself;" we indeed lose and receive particles of our body at every moment. People have gone so far as to calculate that it takes seven years for the renewal of the whole body of man, and that after this s.p.a.ce, there is not even an atom left of the man as he was seven years before.

The regular exchange of matter, as we have seen, supposes the body to be a barter-place, where people take in at the same ratio they pay out.

Since, however, man often pays out involuntarily and suffers so many losses--by the mere process of breathing he ejects matter which he must replace afterwards--this exchange of matter is the cause of the body's possessing the feeling of want. The body has paid out and receives nothing in return; this feeling of want is what we call "Hunger." It forces us to absorb as much as we have paid out.

Nutrition, consequently, is the continual replacing of continual losses.

It is the wonderful transformation of food into the materials composing the human body.

When looking at our fellow-men, however, we must not think, that they are merely beings that have eaten food; but rather that they themselves, viz., their skin, hair, bones, brain, flesh, blood, nails, and teeth, are nothing but their own food, consumed and transformed.

CHAPTER III.

WHAT STRANGE FOOD WE EAT.

Man, according to what has preceded, is nothing but transformed food.

This idea may frighten us; it may be terrible to our hearts; but let us frankly confess, it is a true one! Man consists only of such substances as he has consumed; he is, in fact, nothing but the food he has eaten; he is food in the shape of a living being.

A child is said to live on his mother's milk; but what else does this mean than: "It is mother's milk, that has become alive by having been changed into head, body, hands, feet, etc., etc."

Indeed, it may sound strange, yet it is quite correct: This mother's milk in the shape of a human being consumes again new mother's milk, and, by respiration, by evaporation and secretion of matter, casts out the used-up milk.

This being so, it will now appear evident to every one, that by a profound chemical knowledge of our daily food, we may readily learn to know the chemical components of man, and _vice versa_; knowing the substances of which man is made, it is easy for us to determine, what kind of food he must take, in order to continually renew his body.

Since the mother's milk is the simplest and most natural food for the child, let us consider it according to its importance. We shall then have a stepping-stone towards the knowledge of the food of adults and its effects. The mother's milk contains all the elements, with which the human body can renew itself; should there be but one of those elements wanting in it, the child would inevitably perish.

If, for example, milk did not contain calcareous earth, the consequence would be, that the bones of the child would, soon after its birth, neither grow nor increase in number, but they would fast diminish, and the child would die in consequence of this. The attempt was once made to feed animals on articles without calcareous parts, when, strange to behold, they all grew fat, but very weak in their bones, and finally broke down.

If milk contained no phosphorus, not only would the bones and teeth suffer from the want of it, but even the completion of the child's brain could not properly take place, and the child could not replace the quant.i.ty of brain which it emits and loses every moment by breathing.

If there were no iron in the mother's milk, the child would die from the green-sickness, a malady which, by the way, is dangerous also for grown people, and which is cured by medicines containing plenty of iron.

If there were no sulphur in it, the child's bile could not develop; the bile, as every one knows, has an important function in the human body.

These are but accessory elements of the mother's milk, elements which usually are not looked upon as articles of food; for who is aware that he must eat, and actually does eat daily, phosphorus, iron, calcareous earth, and sulphur? And not only these; there are a great many other articles, such as magnesia, chlorine, and fluor, that we eat without being aware of it; moreover, our proper food consists also of three gases: nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen; and of a solid substance called "carbon," which is no less and no more than pure coal.

All these, my friendly readers, are contained in milk--all these are the elements which in truth const.i.tute the human body. Perhaps some persons believe that there is nothing easier than to procure proper food. It would only be necessary to take a certain quant.i.ty of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; a little bit of pota.s.sium, natron, calcium, and magnesia; to mix a small piece of iron, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, and fluor, and take this mixture by the spoon at regular intervals, in order to give the body the necessary aliments. This, however, would be a mistake, for which the perpetrator would pay with his life.

Although it is true that these substances form the proper and most important const.i.tuents of our daily food; yet, in order to enjoy the desired result, we must not partake of them in their primary forms; they can actually feed our body only when they are combined together in a peculiar, wondrous manner.

In the next chapter it may be seen how nature first must combine these substances before they are presented to us as proper food; and it will also be seen, that we receive them sometimes in altogether different forms and combinations; for example, in the mother's milk, when we eat the above-named elements in the forms of caseine (cheese), butyrine (b.u.t.ter), sugar of milk, salt, and water.

These latter names have a more savory sound, have they not?

CHAPTER IV.

HOW NATURE PREPARES OUR FOOD.

In the preceding article it was stated, that the food of the child which lives on mother's milk, consists in its primary elements of peculiar substances. These are princ.i.p.ally oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen; three gases to which may be added a large quant.i.ty of carbon, or, what is the same, coal. Besides this wondrous mixture of air and coal, the mother's milk contains still other elements, but in a smaller proportion. In every-day life many of them are unfamiliar; for example, natron, calcium, magnesia, chlorine, and fluor; the others, however, are known to every one; viz., iron, sulphur, and phosphorus. All these strange ingredients nature has carefully transformed into milk. For in their primary state, and even in various chemical combinations that may be produced artificially, they would be little adapted for the purpose. It is therefore essentially necessary that nature herself should make them ready for us. This she does by letting them pa.s.s first into the vegetable state, and changing them afterwards into new forms.

The plant feeds on primary chemical elements; or, to state it more correctly, the plant is nothing but transformed primary elements! Not before the transformation of these elements into plants are the elements adapted for food for animals and men.

Moreover, all that man eats must first have been in the vegetable state.

Now, it is true that man also eats the flesh, fat, and eggs of animals; but whence have the animals meat and eggs? Only from the plants they consume.

There is a remarkable succession of transformations in nature. The primary elements nourish the plant; the plant nourishes the animal; and both, plant and animal, form the nourishment of man.

Even the mother's milk, the simplest and most natural food of the child, owes its existence only to the fact that the mother has eaten vegetable and animal matter. This food, prepared for the mother by nature, has been changed into the body of the same; and partly, also, it has become the milk destined to nourish the child.

Hence it is evident that mother's milk consists of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and a small portion of other chemical primary elements. But these substances when appearing in the shape of milk, are combined in such a manner as to form ready-made food; as such they const.i.tute, as stated above, caseine, butyrine, sugar of milk, salt, and water.

The next questions are: "What do these elements of food perform when in the child's body? What becomes of these substances after they have been eaten by the child? How are they changed during the time of their stay in the body? And in what condition do they leave the child's body, and how do they force him to desire food again?"

These questions properly belong to the chapter on "Nutrition," where they will be answered in their turn. Afterwards, we must be permitted to turn our attention to a further question, viz., "What articles of food are the most advantageous to man from the time he is weaned or the time, he takes from among vegetable and animal matter the same substances for food, that are contained in the mother's milk?"

In order to arrive at the answers to all these questions, we were obliged to first prepare the ground a little. This was a gain on our part, for now we shall attain the end in a shorter time than would have been possible otherwise. We trust that we may give our reader a correct idea of the subject, if he will but come to our aid with his most earnest attention and reflection; these are needed here the more, as we have to treat a difficult subject in a very short s.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE MOTHER'S MILK AFTER IT HAS ENTERED THE BODY OF THE CHILD?

When the child has freed itself from the body of its mother, it consists of blood, flesh, and bones, which heretofore were formed and nourished by the blood of the mother.

As soon, however, as the child is born, it ceases to be nourished in this manner. It ceases, also, to secrete through its mother, substances which are useless to it. The child now begins to breathe for itself, and by its breath secretes carbon in the form of carbonic acid. Its skin begins to perspire, and secretes chiefly hydrogen and oxygen in the shape of water or vapor; by the urine, finally, it secretes nitrogen.

These substances--carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen--before their secretion, const.i.tuted vital parts of the child's body; now, however, they are wasted, and for this reason must be thrown off.

It is evident that the child wants compensation for this loss. This is given by the mother's milk; for it contains chiefly these same substances.

But how is this effected?

The milk pa.s.ses from the child's mouth through the gullet into the stomach. While yet in the mouth, the milk is mixed with a certain liquid called saliva. This saliva possesses the quality of preparing the milk for the necessary change which will take place, when it reaches the child's stomach. The princ.i.p.al work, however, is carried on in the stomach itself. Its sides secrete a liquid called "gastric juice,"

whose business it is, to transform into a pulp milk, and also solid food, provided the latter be well masticated and moistened.

Science has taught us to prepare gastric juice artificially. The process of digestion, that is, the transformation of solid food--the crust of bread, meat, etc.--into a pulp, may nowadays be observed in a gla.s.s filled with warm, artificial, gastric juice.

After the digestion is completed, the lower opening of the stomach, which leads into the duodenum, and which, during the process of digestion, was closed by a muscle, opens itself. The pulp, now called "chyme," flows into the continuation of the stomach--the "alimentary ca.n.a.l" or "duodenum." This is but a long bag with many folds and windings.