Where, then, is the quicksand? It is here. If muscular and mental work were done at the expense of the nitrogenous muscular and cerebral tissues, the quantity of nitrogen excreted should vary with the amount of work done. This was formerly stated to be the case without hesitation, as the following passage from Carpenter’s ‘Manual of Physiology’ (3rd edition, 1856, page 256), shows: ‘Every action of the nervous and muscular systems involves the death and decay of a certain amount of the living tissue, as is indicated by the appearance of the products of that decay in the excretions.’
More recent experiments by Fick and Wislicenus, Parkes, Houghton, Ranke, Voit, Flint, and others are said to contradict this by showing that the waste nitrogen varies with the quantity of nitrogenous food that is eaten, but not with the muscular work done. For the details of these experiments I must refer the reader to standard modern physiological treatises, as a full description of them would carry me too far away from my immediate subject. (Dr. Pavy’s ‘Treatise on Food’ has an introductory chapter on ‘The Dynamic Relations of Food,’ in which this subject is clearly treated in sufficient detail for popular reading.)
It is quite the fashion now to rely upon these later experiments; but for my own part, I am by no means satisfied with them—and for this reason, that the excretions from the skin and from the lungs were not examined.
It is just these which are greatly increased by exercise, and their normal quantity is very large, especially those from the skin, which are threefold, viz. the insensible perspiration, which is transpired by the skin as invisible vapour; the sweat, which is liquid, and the solid particles of exuded cuticle.
Lavoisier and Seguin long ago made very laborious experiments upon themselves in order to determine the amount of the insensible perspiration. Seguin enclosed himself in a bag of glazed taffeta, which was tied over him with no other opening than a hole corresponding to his mouth; the edges of this hole were glued to his lips with a mixture of turpentine and pitch. He carefully weighed himself and the bag before and after his enclosure therein. His own loss of weight being partly from the lungs and partly from the skin, the amount gained by the bag represented the quantity of the latter; the difference between this and the loss of his own weight gave the amount exhaled from the lungs.
He thus found that the largest quantity of insensible exhalation from the lungs and skin together amounted to 3½ oz. per hour, or at the rate of 5¼ lbs. per day. The smallest quantity was 1 lb. 14 oz., and the mean was 3 lbs. 11 oz. Three-fourths of this was cutaneous.
These figures only show the quantity of insensible perspiration during repose. Valentin found that his hourly loss by cutaneous exhalation while sitting amounted to 32·8 grammes, or rather less than 1¼ oz. On taking exercise, with an empty stomach, in the sun, the hourly loss increased to 89·3 grammes, or nearly three times as much. After a meal followed by violent exercise, with the temperature of the air at 72° F., it amounted to 132·7 grammes, or nearly 4½ times as much as during repose. A robust man, taking violent exercise in hot weather, may give off as much as 5 lbs. in an hour.
The third excretion from the skin, the epithelial or superficial scales of the epidermis, is small in weight, but it is solid, and of similar composition to gelatin. It should be understood that this increases largely with exercise. The practice of sponging and ‘rubbing down’ of athletes removes the excess; but I am not aware of any attempt that has been made to determine accurately the quantity thus removed.
Does the skin excrete nitrogenous matter that may be, like urea, a product of the degradation or destruction of muscular tissue?
The following passage from Lehmann’s ‘Physiological Chemistry’ (vol. ii. p. 389), shows that the skin throws out plenty of nitrogen obtained from somewhere: ‘It has been shown by the experiments of Milly, Jurine, Ingenhouss, Spallanzani, Abernethy, Barruel, and Collard di Martigny, that gases, and especially carbonic acid and nitrogen, are likewise exhaled with the liquid secretion of the sudiparious glands. According to the last-named experimentalist the ratio between these two gases is very variable; thus, in the gas developed after vegetable food there is a preponderance of carbonic acid, and, after animal food, there is an excess of nitrogen. Abernethy found that on an average the collective gas contained rather more than two-thirds of carbonic acid and rather less than one-third of nitrogen.’ But it appears that less gas is exhaled when there is much liquid perspiration.