years past been engaged in analyzing ingesta and egesta, in drawing up schedules of nutrition, in order to determine the course of decomposition and reconstitution of the living material.
If I were asked what, in my opinion, is the most general result of all this labour, I would reply that it has affirmed and corroborated the important distinction which must be drawn between living substance, properly so called, and reserve-stuff. The latter, the reserve-stuff of albuminoids, carbohydrates, and fats, are so intimately intermingled with the living substance that they are in most cases very difficult to distinguish from it.
Organic Destruction.—A second point, which is placed equally beyond doubt, is that the vital functional activity is accompanied by a destruction of the immediate principles of the organism, in the direction of their simplification. This functional destruction cannot be doubted in the case of differentiated organs in which the functional activity is evident, intermittent, and in some measure distinct from the other vital phenomena which take place in them. For example, in the case of contracting muscles the respiratory carbonic acid and urinary carbon are the irrefutable proofs of this destruction: weak in repose, abundant during activity, and in proportion to it. There can be no doubt on this point. The truth laid down by Claude Bernard under the name of the law of functional destruction has been doubly consecrated by experiment and theory. According to the energetic theory, in fact, mechanical and thermal energies manifested in the vital functional activity can only have their source in the chemical energy set free by the destruction of the immediate
