cause. To these physiologists everything ingested is called food, if it gives off heat within the body.
To be heated by food is, indeed, an imperious necessity for the higher animals. If this need be not satisfied the functional activities become enervated; the animal falls into a state of torpor; and if it is capable of attenuated, of more or less latent, life it sleeps in a state of hibernation; but if it is not capable of this, it dies. The warm-blooded animal with a fixed temperature is so organized that this constancy of temperature is necessary to the exercise and to the conservation of life. To maintain this indispensable temperature there must be a continual supply of thermal energy. According to this, the necessity of alimentation is confused with the necessity of a supply of heat to cover the deficit which is due to the inevitable cooling of the organism. This is the point of view taken up by theorists, and we cannot say that they have no right to do so. We can only protest against the exaggeration of this principle, and the subordination of the other rôles of food to this single role as a thermogen. It is the magnitude of the thermal losses which, according to these physiologists, determines the need for food, and regulates the total value of the maintenance ration. From the quantitative view it is approximately true. From the qualitative point of view it is false.
Such is the theory opposed to the theory of chemical and vital energy. It has on its side a large number of experts, among whom are Rubner, Stohmann, and von Noorden. It has been defended in an article in the Dictionnaire de Physiologie by Ch. Richet and Lapicque. They hold that thermogenesis absolutely dominates the play of nutritive exchanges;
