Gum is another substance that does not contain azote, but which is considered as nutritive. To ascertain whether it acted like sugar and oil, he fed several dogs with this substance, and the phenomena which he observed did not differ sensibly from those above described.

163. The same distinguished physiologist lately repeated the experiment, by feeding a dog with butter, an animal substance free from azote. Like the other animals, it was supported by this food very well at first; but, in about fifteen days, it began to lose flesh and to become weak: it died the thirty-sixth day, although, on the thirty-fourth day, he gave it as much flesh as it would eat, a considerable quantity of which it took for two days. The right eye of this animal presented the ulceration of the cornea that he noticed in those which were fed on sugar. The opening of the body presented the same modifications of the bile and urine. In order to make the evidence furnished by these experiments complete, after having given to dogs separately, oil, gum, or sugar, he opened them, and ascertained that these substances were each reduced to a particular chyme in the stomach, and that they afterwards furnished an abundant chyle; whence he argues, that if these different substances are not nourishing, it cannot be attributed to want of digestion.

164. Now, giving all due credit to the accuracy and good faith with which these experiments were performed, what do their results show? That the azote of the organs is produced by the food, says M. Majendie; and, consequently, that no substance which does not contain this principle can support life. By no means: they merely prove that an animal cannot be supported by highly-concentrated aliment. In contradiction to the theory of Majendie, we know that sugar is highly nutritive, provided it be properly mixed with a quantity of substantial viands; it is certain that, in the process of making hay, if well performed, it will be found that the nutritive matter is greatly increased by the partial conversion of the cruder mucilaginous sap into a substance analogous to sugar; as we find that animals thrive faster with this food, and prefer it to that which is left on the ground, and found in a state of self-made hay. Horses fed on concentrated aliment are invariably liable to various diseases, originating from diseased action in the stomach, and hence arise broken wind, as it is termed, staggers, blindness, etc.

The intolerable fetid odour of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, perceptible when post-horses are fed with oats and beans only, cannot have escaped observation; and it affords sufficient proof of the mischief which arises from a too-concentrated diet. The same remark applies to men; and I shall have occasion to show hereafter, that the use of chocolate, butter, cream, sugar, and rich sauces, without a due admixture of bread, potatoes, and other less nutritive aliments, is invariably attended with disordered digestion. Unless the taste be vitiated by habit, there exists an instinctive aversion to such food.

----------------"The prudent taste Rejects, like bane, such loathsome lusciousness".

The Kamtschatdales are frequently compelled to live on fish-oil, but they judiciously form it into a paste with saw-dust, or the rasped fibres of indigenous plants 1.

165. M. Raspail, in alluding to the experiments of Majendie, observes that, as digestion is a complex operation, we should not seek to study it by isolating its elements. If such a mode of experimenting entitle us to erase sugar, oil, and gum from the list of nutritive substances, we must also erase pure gluten, and even pure albumen; for if an animal be fed on them alone, it will die just as certainly as if it be fed exclusively on sugar.