are varieties of albumen, carbo-hydrates, and fatty bodies, the heats of combustion of which in the organism oscillate in the neighbourhood of the numbers 4.8, 4.2, and 9.4. Each of these bodies has been individually examined, and numerical tables have been drawn up by Berthelot, Rubner, Stohmann, Van Noorden, etc. The tables exhibit the thermal value or energetic value of very different kinds of foods.
In our climate, the adult average man, doing no laborious work, daily consumes a maintenance ration composed, as a rule, of 100 grammes of albuminoids, 49 grammes of fats, and 403 grammes of carbo-hydrates. This ration has an energetic value of 2,600 Calories.
It is therefore, thanks to the victories won in the field of thermo-chemistry, and to the principles laid down since 1864 by M. Berthelot, that this second method of attack on nutritive dynamism has been rendered possible. Physiologists, by the aid of these methods, have drawn up balance-sheets of energy for living beings just as they had previously established balance-sheets of matter.
Now, it is precisely researches of this kind that we have indicated here as a consequence of biological energetics, which in reality have helped to build up that principle. These researches have shown us that, in conformity with the principles of thermodynamics, there was not, in fact, in the organism, any transformation of heat into mechanical work, as the physiologists for a short time supposed, on the authority of Berthelot. With the help of our theory this mistake is no longer possible. The doctrine of energetics shows us in fact the current of energy dividing itself, as it issues from the living being, into
