DIGESTION AND FOOD.
151. Why do we need food? Why will a person starve without food? Are the current stories of people who live without food to be relied upon? How much food is needed per day by an adult in active exercise?
152. How much in a year? How does this amount vary? Describe the body as a mold. As an eddy. What does food do for us? What does food contain?
153. How is this force set free? What force is this? How can it be turned into muscular motion, mental vigor, etc.? Do we then draw all our power from nature? What becomes of these forces when we are done with them? Do we destroy the force we use? Ans. No matter has been destroyed, so far as we know, since the creation, and force is equally indestructible. Compare our food to a tense spring.
154. What three kinds of food do we need? What is nitrogenous food? Name the common forms. What is the characteristic of nitrogenous food? Why called albuminous? What is carbonaceous food? Its two kinds? Constituents of sugar? Where are starch and gum ranked? Why? Use of carbonaceous food? What becomes of this heat? Composition of fat? How does fat compare with sugar in producing heat?
155. Name the other uses of carbonaceous food. From what kind of food does the body derive the greatest strength? Name the mineral matters which should be contained in our food. What can you say of the abundance and necessity of water? Ought we not to exercise great care in selecting the water we drink? [Footnote: Water which has passed through lead pipes is apt to contain salts of that metal, and is therefore open to suspicion. Metallic lined ice pitchers, galvanized-iron reservoirs, and many soda- water fountains, are liable to the same objection. (See pp. 317, 318.)] Does the character of our food influence the quantity of water we need?
156. What are the uses of the different minerals contained in food? Illustrate the importance of salt. Could a person live on one kind of food alone? Illustrate.
157. Describe the effect of living on lean meat. Show the necessity of a mixed diet. Illustrate. Show the need of digestion. Illustrate.
158. What is assimilation? Describe the general plan of digestion. What did Berzelius call digestion? Why? What amount of liquid is daily secreted by the alimentary canal? What is the alimentary canal? How is it lined? How does the amba digest its food?
159. The hydra? Define secretion. Describe the saliva. How is it secreted? What is the amount? Its organic principle? Its use? How soon does it act? How long? What tends to check or increase the flow of saliva?
160. Describe the process of swallowing. The stomach. Its size. Its construction. What is the peristaltic movement?
162. What is the pylorus? For what does this open? What is the gastric juice? How abundant is it? To what is its acidity due? What organic principle does it contain? How is pepsin prepared? How is the flow of gastric juice influenced?
163. What is its use? Appearance of the food as it passes through the pylorus? Why is not the stomach itself digested? What is the construction of the intestines? How are the intestines divided? What is the duodenum? Why so called? What juices are secreted here?
164. What is the bile? Describe the liver. What is its weight? Its construction? Ans. It consists of a mass of polyhedral cells only 1/100 to 1/2000 of an inch in diameter, filling a mesh of capillaries. The capillaries carry the blood to and fro, and the cells secrete the bile. What is the cyst? What does the liver secrete from the blood besides the bile? Is the bile necessary to life? Illustrate. What is its use?
165. What is the pancreatic juice? Its organic principle? Its use? Appearance of the food when it leaves the duodenum? Describe the small intestine. What is absorption? In what two ways is the food absorbed?
166. Where does the process commence? How long does it last? Describe the lacteals. Of what general system do they form a part? What do the veins absorb? Where do they carry the food? How is it modified?
167. What is glycogen? Describe the complexity of the process of digestion. What length of time is required for digestion in the stomach?
168. May not food which requires little time in the stomach need more in the other organs, and vice versa? Tell the story of Alexis St. Martin. What time was required to digest an ordinary meal? Apples? Eggs, raw and cooked? Roast beef? Pork? Which is the king of the meats? What is the nutritive value of mutton? Lamb? How should it be cooked? Objection to pork? What is the trichina?
169. Should ham ever be eaten raw? Value of fish? Oysters? Milk? Cheese? Eggs? Bread? Brown bread? Are warm biscuit and bread healthful? Nutritive value of corn?
170. Of the potato? Of ripe fruits? Of coffee? To what is its stimulating property due? Its influence on the system? When should it be discarded? Should children use any stimulants?
171. Effects of tea? Influence of strong tea? What is the active principle of tea? Nutritive value of chocolate? What is its active principle? Story of Linnæus? How should tea be made? What is the effect of cooking food? What precaution in boiling meat? In roasting? Object of this high temperature? What precaution in making soup? Why is frying an unhealthful mode of cooking?
172. State the five evil results of rapid eating. What disease grows out of it? If one is compelled to eat a meal rapidly, as at a railroad station, what should he take? Why? Why does a child need more food proportionately than an old person? State the relation of waste to repair in youth, in middle, and in old age. What kind and quantity of food does a sedentary occupation require? What caution should students who have been accustomed to manual labor observe? Must a student starve himself?
173. Is there not danger of overeating? Would not an occasional abstinence from a meal be beneficial? Do not most people eat more than is for their good? How should the season regulate our diet? The climate? Illustrate. What does a natural appetite indicate? How are we to judge between a natural and an artificial longing? What does the craving of childhood for sugar indicate? [Footnote: It does not follow from this, however, that the free use of sugar in its separate form is desirable. The ordinary articles of vegetable food contain sugar (or starch, which in the body is converted into sugar), in large proportion; and there is good reason to believe that in its naturally combined form it is both more easily digested, and more available for the purposes of nutrition, than when crystallized. The ordinary sugar of commerce, moreover, derived from the sugar cane, is not capable of being directly applied to physiological purposes. Cane sugar is converted within the body into another kind of sugar, identical with that derived from the grape, before it can enter into the circuit of the vital changes.]
174. What is the effect upon the circulation of taking food? Should we labor or study just before or after a meal? Why not? What time should intervene between our meals? Is "lunching" a healthful practice? Eating heartily just before retiring? Is it never wise to eat at this time? (See p. 337.) Why should care be banished from the table? Will a regular routine of food be beneficial?
175, 176. Describe some of the wonders of digestion. What are the principal causes of dyspepsia? How may we avoid that disease?
177. What are the mumps? What care should be taken? Is alcohol a food? Illustrate.
178-187. Compare the action of alcohol with that of water. Is the alcohol taken into the stomach eliminated unchanged? Does alcohol contain any element needed by the body? What is the effect of alcohol upon the digestion? Will pepsin act in the presence of alcohol? What is the effect of alcohol upon the liver? What is "Fatty Degeneration"? What is the effect of alcohol upon the kidneys? Does alcohol impart heat to the body? Does it confer strength? What does Dr. Kane say? Describe Richardson's experiments. Tell what peculiar influence alcohol exerts. What is alcoholism? What is heredity?
317. What characteristics should good drinking water possess? Are these always proof of its purity? Will filters remove all danger of contamination? How may a river infect the entire population of a town? State how well water may become a dangerous drink.
318. Relate how cases of fever have been caused by carelessness in dairies. How should suspected water be treated? Describe a convenient portable filter. Tell how water is affected by foul air.
319. Tell how ice may breed disease. What caution should be observed in engaging ice for our summer supply? Illustrate the structure of the glandular coat of the stomach.
320. What is the office of the cells? Describe the life history of a cell. How does the stomach weep, and what is the character of its tears?
321. What is tyrotoxicon? Give Dr. Vaughan's experiments with cheese, milk, and ice cream. Tell how milk may be poisoned.
322. Compare the vigor of exclusively fish-eating with flesh-eating people. What is the peculiar value of fish as a diet? To what class of people is it best suited? Name examples. Describe the principles contained in coffee. What is the effect of caffeone? Of caffeine? Give some of the specific effects of coffee. How does tea differ from coffee? Describe the injurious effects of excessive tea drinking.
324. Compare theine and cocaine. Should children drink tea and coffee?
325. Give some causes of indigestion. Why are nervous people prone to dyspepsia? Give the comparative digestibility of various meats.
326. Describe how our food sustains our bodies. Illustrate the energy contained in one gramme of beef fat. Why is there danger in a "high- pressure" style of living? Illustrate.
327. State the effects of gluttony. Why is it unkindness to indulge inordinate appetites in children? What should be the rule in regard to their food? What effects would follow its observance?