Life and death

by A. Dastre

From the point of view of the heat produced it has just been said that these cycles are equivalent. But are they equivalent from the vital point of view? This is an essential question.

Let us imagine the most ordinary alternative. Food passes from the natural to the final state after being incorporated with the elements of the tissues, and after having taken part in the vital operations. The chemical potential only passes into thermal energy after having passed through a certain intermediary phase of vital energy. This is the normal case, the regular type of alimentary evolution. It may be said in this case that the food has fulfilled the whole of its function, it has served for the vital functional activity before producing heat. It has been biothermogenic.

The irregular or pure thermogenic type.—And now let us conceive of the most simple irregular or aberrant type. Food passes from the initial to the final state without incorporation in the living cells of the organism, and without taking part in the vital functional activity. It remains confined in the blood and the circulating liquids, but it undergoes in the end, however, the same molecular disintegration as before, and sets free the same quantity of heat Its chemical energy changes at once into thermal energy. Food is a pure thermogen. It has fulfilled only one part of its work. It has been of slight vital utility.

Does this ever occur in reality? Are there foods which would be only pure thermogens—that is to say, which would not in reality be incorporated with the living anatomical elements, which would form no part of them either in a state of provisory constituents of the living protoplasm, or in the state of reserve-stuff; which would remain in the internal medium, in the blood and the lymph, and would there undergo their chemical evolution? Or again, if the whole of the food does not escape assimilation, would it be possible for part to escape it? Would it be possible for one part of the same alimentary substance to be incorporated, and for the rest to be kept in the blood or the lymph, in the circulating liquids ad limina corporis, so to speak? In other words, can the same food be according to circumstances a biothermogen or a pure thermogen? Some physiologists—Fick of Wurzburg, for instance—have claimed that this is really the case for most nitrogenous elements, carbohydrates, and fats; all would be capable of evolving according to the two types. On the other hand, Zuntz and von Mering have absolutely denied the existence of the aberrant or pure thermogenic type. No substances would be directly decomposed in the organic liquids apart from the functional intervention of the histological elements. Finally, other authors teach that there is a small number of alimentary substances which thus undergoes direct combustion, and among them is alcohol.

Liebig’s Superfluous Consumption.—Liebig’s theory of superfluous consumption and Voit’s theory of the circulating albumen assert that the proteid foods undergo partial direct combustion in the blood vessels. The organism only incorporates what is necessary for physiological requirements. As for the surplus of the food that is offered it, it accepts it, and, so to speak, squanders it; it burns it directly; and we have a “sumptuary” consumption, consumption de luxe.

In this connection arose a celebrated discussion which still divides physiologists. If we disengage the essential body of the discussion from all that envelops it, we see that it is fundamentally a question of deciding whether a food always follows the same evolution whatever the circumstances may be, and particularly when it is introduced in great excess. Liebig thought that the superabundant part, escaping the ordinary process, was destroyed by direct combustion. He affirmed, for instance, that nitrogenous substances in excess were directly burned in the blood instead of passing through their usual cycle of vital operations. We might express the same idea by saying that they then undergo an accelerated evolution. Instead of passing through the blood in the anatomical element, to return in the dismembered form from the anatomical element to the blood, their breaking up takes place in the blood itself. They save a displacement, and therefore in reality remain external to the construction of the living edifice. Their energy, crossing the intermediary vital stage, passes with a leap from the chemical to the thermal form. Liebig’s doctrine reduced to this fundamental idea deserved to survive, but mistakes in minor details involved its ruin.

Voit’s Circulating Albumen.—A few years later C. Voit, a celebrated physiological chemist of Munich, revived it in a more extravagant form. He held that almost the whole of the albuminoid element is burned directly in the blood. He interpreted certain experiments on the utilization of nitrogenous foods by imagining that these substances when introduced into the blood were divided as a result of digestion into two parts: the one very small, which was incorporated with the living elements, and passed into the stage of organized albumen, the other, corresponding to the greater part of the alimentary albumen, remained mingled with the blood and lymph, and was subjected in this medium to direct combustion. This was circulating albumen. In this theory the tissues are almost stable; the organic liquids alone are subjected to oxydizing transformations, to nutritive metabolism. The accelerated evolution, which Liebig considered as an exceptional case, was to C. Voit the rule.

Current Ideas as to the Rôle of Foods.—The ideas of to-day are not those of Voit; but they do not, however, differ from them essentially. We no longer admit that the greater part of the ingested and digested albumen remains confined in the circulating medium external to the anatomical elements. It is held, with Pflüger and the school of Bonn, that it penetrates the anatomical element and is incorporated in it; but in agreement with Voit it is believed that a very small part is assimilated to the really living matter, to the protoplasm properly so called; the greater part is deposited in the cellular element as reserve-stuff. The material, properly so called, of the living machine does not undergo destruction and reparation as extensively as our predecessors supposed. There is no need for great reparation. On the contrary, the physiological activity consumes to a great extent the reserve-stuff. And the greater part of the food, after having undergone suitable elaboration, serves to replace the reserve-stuff destroyed in each anatomical element by the vital functional activity.

Experimental Facts.—Among the facts which brought physiologists of the school of Voit to believe that most foods do not get beyond the internal medium, there is one which may well be mentioned here. It has been observed that the consumption of oxygen in respiration increases notably (about a fifth of its value) immediately after a meal. What does this mean? The interval is too short for the digested alimentary substances to have been elaborated and incorporated in the living cells. It is supposed that an appreciable time is required for this complete assimilation. The products of alimentary digestion are therefore in all probability still in the blood, and in the interstitial liquids in communication with it. The increase of oxygen consumed would show that a considerable portion of these nutritive substances absorbed and passed into the blood would be oxydized and then and there destroyed. But this interpretation, however probable it may be, does not really fit in with the facts in such a way that we may consider it as proved. Certain experiments by Zuntz and Mering are opposed to the idea that combustion in the blood is easy. These physiologists injected certain oxydizable substances into the vessels without being able to detect any instantaneous oxidation. It is only fair to add that against these fruitless attempts other more fortunate experiments may be quoted.

Category of Purely Thermogenic Foods, with Accelerated Evolution. Alcohol. Acids of Fruits.—The accelerated evolution of foods—an evolution which takes place in the blood, that is to say outside the really living elements—remains, therefore, very uncertain as far as ordinary food is concerned. It has been thought that it was a little less uncertain as far as the special category of alcohol, acids of fruits, and glycerine is concerned.