considerable a quantity of perspirable matter. Neither can the body itself supply it, because then it would suffer loss without reparation, for as all the food goes to other uses, there is nothing wherewith to repair it. "But the very fact, that the absorbents conduct their contents into the circulation, is a proof that those contents are not intended to be thrown away as 'waste.' It seems a contradiction of all economy to mix the waste and the fresh materials together; and yet this takes place in an extraordinary way, if that theory be true; for, by one common tube-the thoracic duct-the waste and the food enter the circulation!" Surely, if there were any wasted corporeity to be removed, there would have been an outlet in some part of the intestinal canal, as the readiest channel to carry it off, so that the circulation should not be loaded with it.* Why has not the profession made repeated and large discoveries of unmistakeable wasted solid animal

matter, if such there were? One professional gentleman ascertained that the fluid collected from his hand, confined in a glass vessel for an hour, "possessed all the properties of pure

Essay on Food."

water."* That heated vapour is evolved through the skin cannot be questioned; and the quantity expended is in proportion to the carbon from the food and the air which are consumed in respiration. This accounts for the steam, or water, so collected. What have we ourselves discovered? The only perspirable matter we have ever discovered has, from our labour or strong exercise promoting the escape of it, been water. Then how do the imagined debris of the body escape? There is no way of escape-the conclusion is irresistible-there are no debris, no wasted corpuscules, or particles of the body, to require liberation.

17. The statement made by Him who is infallible is now shewn to be true, and may be relied upon as perfectly decisive of the entire question whether food remains to repair the supposed waste of the body, namely, that "whatsoever entereth in at the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught :"+ and consequently does not become, by assimilation, any part of the corporeal frame. The theory, therefore, of the reparation

*The constituents of water are the weights eight of oxygen and one of hydrogen.

+ Matt. xv. 17.

of waste is also contrary to the words of Jesus, who, it cannot be doubted, had a perfect knowledge of the subject, physiological as well as moral.

18. It is also contrary to the words of the Apostle Paul, who states that meats "perish with the using;" so that, therefore, if food perish, it does not remain to repair waste, and there is absolutely an end thereof as regards the body at the time of its evacuation. And doubtless the Holy Spirit preserved the Apostle from error in this point of physiology.

19. Seeing then that all the food received is evolved from the stomach and system: and if it were true that particles of the body are jactitated continually therefrom, we should in a short time have exhibited to demonstration, that this cenosis would speedily annihilate the whole physical man, leaving the oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, to evaporate with his wasted matter and vanished body, his carbon having also all been consumed by respiration. Then how would the body which is lost in nonentity, and is literally non est, rise again? This is but carrying the error of waste to its consequence.

* Col. ii. 22.

20. Does not a person who has an insufficiency of food, or one who is ill, weigh less than when he was well fed and in good health? Yes, but it is not the loss of any part of his solid corporeity which is the cause of the comparative levity of his body, but it is the loss of the juices and fluids in excess, or much beyond the ordinary waste of nourishment derived from the food, which would by its diadosis have sustained the body when taken in proper quantity while in good health, because the waste of the secrements has been greater than the supply. In proof of this it may be stated that a fluxion from the nostrils, during a "common cold," drains the adjacent vessels of their fluids, and causes a thinner appearance of the face. On the same principle, an ulcer will also occasion similar loss. And how greatly will a diarrhea debilitate the body by the waste of that which should have sustained it, namely, the food. A fever causes the appearance of waste by abstracting the carbon in excess from the blood. During fever more blood passes through the lungs to be decarbonized than the stomach can furnish by digestion. The loss is greater than the supply. This is probably, as before hypothetically stated, occasioned by the increased temperature of the body.

This is simply an arithmetical question of tare and tret, because we must subtract the tare, or secretitious matter, including the food, from the gross weight, whether the body be in a state of obesity or otherwise, and the remainder or difference is the net weight of the solid materials, or the real and proper weight of the body.

21. Food may be said to nourish the body, as it really does, but nutrition and assimilation included in the supposed process of reparation of waste, are terms which have originated in a mistake, and on this subject should be disused as perfectly unphilosophical.

22. The waste of the body is imagined by the philosophical writer to have begun when man had committed the original offence. But let us see what the penalty is which the offended Creator denounced against the body after sin had been committed. This is a part of it-"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."* There cannot be two opinions as to the meaning of these words. The body that committed the offence is to bear the penalty during life-no in* Genesis iii. 19.