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Next to the production of heat, in the consumption of the body’s energy, is the production of motion. *Some Questions of Hygiene.*—The heat-producing capacity of the body sustains a very important relation to the general health. A sudden chill may result in a number of derangements and is supposed to be a predisposing cause of colds.
Very small animals cannot keep up a constant high temperature unless the surrounding air is warm, for their radiating surface is too large in comparison with their heat-producing mass. At the first approach of even cool weather they become chilled and sluggish, and must hibernate or die. They are conformed to but a limited range of environment in temperature.
"Tea, in ordinary doses, has not any effect on the amount of carbonic acid expired, the frequency of the respirations, or of the pulse." Obviously, then, it is not with reference to the heat-producing function that we can look upon tea as in any sense a nutriment; and if it causes no saving of carbon, its effects must be sought in checking some other waste, or in the less consumption of nitrogen.
In persons accustomed to a climate as warm as that of Hili-li, the heat-producing functions are feeble, and the heat-expelling functions are very active; but this does not fully explain why, in Peters' words, 'the people there froze to death without freezing. Any person dying as a result of exposure to cold, dies long before any of the vital organs are frozen; and the Hili-lites no doubt ceased to live with a reduction of bodily temperature which would not have seriously inconvenienced a resident of Scotland or Canada.
It collects round the angular bones of the animal, and gives the appearance of rotundity; hence the tendency to deposit fat is indicated, as has been stated, by a roundness of form, as opposed to the fatness of a milk-secreting animal. But its greatest use is, that it is a store of heat-producing aliment, laid up for seasons of scarcity and want.
It was selected with a deep physiological design. Meat of this character consists almost wholly of fibrine, the least heat-producing constituent of flesh. By excluding all fats and other tender portions, and confining ourselves to fibrine, we are the better able to stand this torrid weather." One of the Hospital Stewards groaned deeply. "What is the matter, 'Squills'?" said the Doctor, kindly.
Because of the psychological effects of this drug in removing restraint, inhibition and formality, in its various forms it became the symbol of good-fellowship; and because it has an apparent stimulation and heat-producing effect there grew up the notion that it aided hard labor and helped resist hardship.
It is true, some kinds of food such as alcohol, tea and coffee, and perhaps some others do not require to go farther than the blood to be burned, but these are mainly heat-producing, and not tissue-producing substances.
The division of food into azotized and non-azotized is no doubt important, but the attempt to show that the first only is plastic or nutritive, while the second is simply calorifacient, or heat-producing, fails entirely in the face of the facts revealed by the study of man in different climates, and of numerous experiments in the feeding of animals.
We eat far too much heat-producing food, and any thing which gives us the gluten of the grain is more wholesome, and thus "seconds" is really a more nutritious flour than the finer grades. Try for yourselves a small experiment, and you will learn the nature of flour better than in pages of description. Take a little flour; wet it with cold water enough to form a dough.
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