- rent of energy as it emerges and in the form of
heat, we may try and capture it at its entry in the form of potential chemical energy.
The evaluation of potential chemical energy may be effected with the same unit of measurement as the preceding—that is to say, the Calorie. If we consider man and mammals, for example, we know that there is only apparently an infinite variety in their foods. We may say that they feed on only three substances. It is a very remarkable fact that all the complexity and multiplicity of foods, fruits, grains, leaves, animal tissues, and vegetable products of which use is made, reduce to so great a simplicity and uniformity, that all these substances are of three types only: albuminoids, such as albumen or white of egg—foods of animal origin or varieties of albumen; carbo-hydrates, which are more or less disguised varieties of sugar; and finally, fats.
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.
