Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet.

  • Bennet, James Henry, 1816-1891.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    my own experiments and observation, principally directed to the state of the urine after food, I think I am warranted in giving the following list as a guide to be generally relied on in estimating the comparative digestibility of different articles of food : milk, eggs, broths and light soups, cooked vegetables, fish, fowl, game, lamb, mutton, veal, beef, salted meat, including ham and bacon. The time occupied in the digestion of these alimentary substances, before they reach the blood, and modify the urine, varies from two hours for the lighter food—such as eggs, milk, broths, to five hours for the more dense alimentary substances, and more especially for salted meats, ham, beef, and bacon. The chemical changes that take place in the stomach are important. The fibrin and the albumen of animal tissues and fluids are chemically acted upon by the gastric juice, and appear to be con- verted into a low form of albumen, not precipitable by nitric acid or by heat, and now generally termed albuminose or peptone, from which they are later to be again elaborated. The same change probably takes place in the nitrogenous elements of vegetable food. The other elements of vegetable substances are principally sugar, gum, lignin, and starch. The sugar, gum, and dextrin which are soluble, are probably dissolved at once, and ab- sorbed ; whilst the insoluble starch that has not been converted into dextrin or sugar in the stomach, probably undergoes that transformation in the