Art. [I].
NUTRIENTIA.
[I]. [1]. Those things, which preserve in their natural state the due exertions of all the irritative motions, are termed nutrientia; they produce the growth, and restore the waste, of the system. These consist of a variety of mild vegetable and animal substances, water, and air.
[2]. Where stronger stimuli have been long used, they become necessary for this purpose, as mustard, spice, salt, beer, wine, vinegar, alcohol, opium. Which however, as they are unnatural stimuli, and difficult to manage in respect to quantity, are liable to shorten the span of human life, sooner rendering the system incapable of being stimulated into action by the nutrientia. See Sect XXXVII. 4. On the same account life is shorter in warmer climates than in more temperate ones.
[II]. Observations on the Nutrientia.
[I]. [1]. The flesh of animals contains more nourishment, and stimulates our absorbent and secerning vessels more powerfully, than the vegetable productions, which we use as food; for the carnivorous animals can fast longer without injury than the graminivorous; and we feel ourselves warmer and stronger after a meal of flesh than of grain. Hence in diseases attended with cold extremities and general debility this kind of diet is preferred; as in rickets, dropsy, scrophula, and in hysteric and hypochondriac cases, and to prevent the returns of agues. Might not flesh in small quantities bruised to a pulp be more advantageously used in fevers attended with debility than vegetable diet?
That flesh, which is of the darkest colour, generally contains more nourishment, and stimulates our vessels more powerfully, than the white kinds. The flesh of the carnivorous and piscivorous animals is so stimulating, that it seldom enters into the food of European nations, except the swine, the Soland goose (Pelicanus Bassanus), and formerly the swan. Of these the swine and the swan are fed previously upon vegetable aliment; and the Soland goose is taken in very small quantity, only as a whet to the appetite. Next to these are the birds, that feed upon insects, which are perhaps the most stimulating and the most nutritive of our usual food.
It is said that a greater quantity of volatile alkali can be obtained from this kind of flesh, to which has been ascribed its stimulating quality. But it is more probable, that fresh flesh contains only the elements of volatile alkali.
[2]. Next to the dark coloured flesh of animals, the various tribes of shell-fish seem to claim their place, and the wholesome kinds of mushrooms, which must be esteemed animal food, both for their alkalescent tendency, their stimulating quality, and the quantity of nourishment, which they afford; as oysters, lobsters, crabfish, shrimps; mushrooms; to which perhaps might be added some of the fish without scales; as the eel, barbolt, tench, smelt, turbot, turtle.