Life and death

by A. Dastre

Here, then, from the chemical point of view, leaving out certain mineral substances, are the principal categories of alimentary substances. Here, with the oxygen that is brought in by respiration, is everything that penetrates the organism.

And now, what comes out of the organism? Three things only, water, carbonic acid, and urea. But the former are the products of the combustion of the latter. If we consider an adult organism in perfect equilibrium, which varies throughout the experiment neither in weight nor in composition, we may say that the receipts balance the expenditure. Albumen, sugar, fat, plus the oxygen brought in, balance quantitatively the water, carbonic acid, and urea expelled. Things happen, in fact, as if the foods of the three categories were burned up more or less completely by the oxygen.

It is this combustion that we have known since the days of Lavoisier to be the source of animal heat. We can easily determine the quantity of heat left by albumen passing into the state of urea, and by the starch, the sugars, and the fats reduced to the state of water and carbonic acid. This quantity of heat does not depend on the variety of the unknown intermediary products which have been formed in the organism. Berthelot has shown that this quantity of heat which measures the chemical energy liberated by these substances is identical with the quantity obtained by burning the sugar and the fats in a chemical apparatus, in a calorimetric bomb, until we get carbonic acid and water, and by burning albumen till we get urea. This result is a consequence of Berthelot’s principle of initial and final states. The liberated heat only depends on the initial and final states, and not on the intermediary states. The heat left in the economy by the food being the same as that left in the calorimetric bomb, it is easy for the chemist to determine it. It has thus been discovered that one gramme of albumen produces 4.8 Calories, one gramme of sugar 4.2 Calories, and one gramme of fat 9.4 Calories. We thus gather what a given ration—a mixture in certain proportions of these different kinds of foods—supplies to the organism and what energy it gives it, measured in Calories.

The calculation may be carried out to a high degree of accuracy if, instead of confining ourselves to the broad features of the problem, we enter into rigorous detail. It is only, in fact, approximately that we have reduced all foods to albumen, sugar, and fat, and all excreta to water, carbonic acid, and urea.

The reality is a little more complicated. There are varieties of albumen, carbo-hydrates, and fatty bodies, the heats of combustion of which in the organism oscillate in the neighbourhood of the numbers 4.8, 4.2, and 9.4. Each of these bodies has been individually examined, and numerical tables have been drawn up by Berthelot, Rubner, Stohmann, Van Noorden, etc. The tables exhibit the thermal value or energetic value of very different kinds of foods.

In our climate, the adult average man, doing no laborious work, daily consumes a maintenance ration composed, as a rule, of 100 grammes of albuminoids, 49 grammes of fats, and 403 grammes of carbo-hydrates. This ration has an energetic value of 2,600 Calories.

It is therefore, thanks to the victories won in the field of thermo-chemistry, and to the principles laid down since 1864 by M. Berthelot, that this second method of attack on nutritive dynamism has been rendered possible. Physiologists, by the aid of these methods, have drawn up balance-sheets of energy for living beings just as they had previously established balance-sheets of matter.

Now, it is precisely researches of this kind that we have indicated here as a consequence of biological energetics, which in reality have helped to build up that principle. These researches have shown us that, in conformity with the principles of thermodynamics, there was not, in fact, in the organism, any transformation of heat into mechanical work, as the physiologists for a short time supposed, on the authority of Berthelot. With the help of our theory this mistake is no longer possible. The doctrine of energetics shows us in fact the current of energy dividing itself, as it issues from the living being, into two divergent branches, the one thermal and the other mechanical, external the one to the other although both issuing from the same common trunk, and having between them no relation but this, that the sum of their discharges represents the total of the energy in motion. Let us now translate these very simple notions into the more or less barbarous jargon in use in physiology. We shall be convinced as we go on of the truth of the saying of Buffon, that “the language of science is more difficult to learn than the science itself.” We shall say, then, that chemical energy, that the unit of weight of the food which may be placed in the organism, constitutes the alimentary potential, the energetic value of this substance, its dynamogenic power. It is measured in units of heat, in Calories, which the substance may leave in the organism. The evaluation is made according to the principles of thermo-chemistry, by means of the numerical tables of Berthelot, Rubner, and Stohmann. The same number also expresses the thermogenic power, virtual or theoretical, of the alimentary substance. This energy being destined to be transformed into vital energies (Chauveau’s physiological work, physiological energy), the dynamogenic or thermogenic value of the food is at the same time its biogenetic value. Two weights of different foods which supply the organism with the same number of Calories,—i.e. for which these numerical values are the same,—will be called isodynamic or isodynamogenic, isobiogenetic, isoenergetic weights. They will be equivalent from the point of view of their alimentary value. And finally, if, as is usually the case, the cycle of energy ends in the production of heat, the food which has been utilized for this purpose has a real thermogenic value, identical with its theoretical thermogenic value. In this case it might be determined experimentally by direct calorimetry, measuring the heat produced by the animal supposed absolutely unchanged and identical before and after the consumption of the food.

§ 3. Different Types of Foods. The Regular, Biothermogenic Type and the Irregular, Thermogenic Type.

Food is a source of thermal energy for the organism because it is decomposed within it, and undergoes within it a chemical degradation. Physiological chemistry tells us that whatever be the manner in which it is broken up, it always results in the same body and always sets free the same quantity of heat. But if the point of departure and the point of arrival are the same, it is possible that the path pursued is not constantly identical. For example, one gramme of fat will always give the same quantity of heat, 9.4 Calories, and will always come to its final state of carbonic acid and water; but from the fat to the mixture of carbonic acid gas and water there are many different intermediaries. In a word we get the conception of varied cycles of alimentary evolutions.