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bones, hair, teeth, nails, flesh, blood, veins, nerves, skin, juices, and water are manufactured; all this is made from milk, and during the first months of the child's life from nothing but milk,"—then your hearer, though he may have the understanding of the most judicious of men, would be dumbfounded, and would beseech you to tell him more about this factory.

      You may be certain, he would like to know, how many boilers, cylinders, valves, wires, ladles, oars, pumps, hooks, pins, spokes, and knobs there may be in this factory; more especially would he wish to know, whether the engine of this wonderful establishment be made of steel, wood, cast-iron, silver or gold, or of diamonds.

      Now, if you were to tell him, "It contains nothing of the kind. Of all the factories you have seen in your life, there is none that bears any resemblance to this one. And I will tell you furthermore, that it is not even a complete factory, but it is continually developing; it becomes larger and heavier like the child's body itself; moreover, the factory does not consist of iron or steel, nor of gold or diamonds, but it reproduces itself at every moment; it does so merely from the milk that the child drinks,"—then, to be sure, your hearer would begin to doubt his own senses; he would exclaim: "What is the intellect of the intelligent, the judgment of the judicious, what is the wisdom of the wise, when compared to a little of the mother's milk?"

      And yet, you are well aware, my friendly reader, that mother's milk is, after all, nothing but milk; and that milk, again, is nothing but a means of nutrition; and nutrition, in its turn, is nothing but a part of the action of the human body.

      May I hope that you will favor me with your attention, while, in a few articles, I speak to you about the nutrition of the human body?

CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      MAN THE TRANSFORMED FOOD.

      Before speaking of the process of nutrition in the human body, we must first obtain a correct idea of what is meant by nutrition.

      Why are we obliged to eat?

      Of course we know that hunger forces us to do so. But every one is aware also, that above all we must ask, whence hunger arises; that we must first get better acquainted with hunger itself, in order to understand nutrition.

      To explain this, however, it is necessary to turn our attention to another thing, no less a miracle than nutrition itself, viz., what in scientific language is called "Exchange of Matter." To all of you it is a well-known fact, that nothing in the human body remains even for a moment in the same state; but that in every part of the body a continued exchange takes place. Air is breathed in and exhaled again; but the air exhaled is different from the air inhaled. By this process an exchange of matter has taken place; new matter has entered the body and waste matter has been thrown out.

      This exchange of matter—we shall speak more about it at another opportunity—is a principal necessity for the body and its functions; it consists in the main of an incessant change, by which our body is forced to cast out matter that formed parts of it, and is therefore obliged, in order to compensate for the loss, to take in new matter. Hence there is no exaggeration in the expression, "Man is continually renewing himself;" we indeed lose and receive particles of our body at every moment. People have gone so far as to calculate that it takes seven years for the renewal of the whole body of man, and that after this space, there is not even an atom left of the man as he was seven years before.

      The regular exchange of matter, as we have seen, supposes the body to be a barter-place, where people take in at the same ratio they pay out. Since, however, man often pays out involuntarily and suffers so many losses—by the mere process of breathing he ejects matter which he must replace afterwards—this exchange of matter is the cause of the body's possessing the feeling of want. The body has paid out and receives nothing in return; this feeling of want is what we call "Hunger." It forces us to absorb as much as we have paid out.

      Nutrition, consequently, is the continual replacing of continual losses. It is the wonderful transformation of food into the materials composing the human body.

      When looking at our fellow-men, however, we must not think, that they are merely beings that have eaten food; but rather that they themselves, viz., their skin, hair, bones, brain, flesh, blood, nails, and teeth, are nothing but their own food, consumed and transformed.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      WHAT STRANGE FOOD WE EAT.

      Man, according to what has preceded, is nothing but transformed food.

      This idea may frighten us; it may be terrible to our hearts; but let us frankly confess, it is a true one! Man consists only of such substances as he has consumed; he is, in fact, nothing but the food he has eaten; he is food in the shape of a living being.

      A child is said to live on his mother's milk; but what else does this mean than: "It is mother's milk, that has become alive by having been changed into head, body, hands, feet, etc., etc."

      Indeed, it may sound strange, yet it is quite correct: This mother's milk in the shape of a human being consumes again new mother's milk, and, by respiration, by evaporation and secretion of matter, casts out the used-up milk.

      This being so, it will now appear evident to every one, that by a profound chemical knowledge of our daily food, we may readily learn to know the chemical components of man, and vice versâ; knowing the substances of which man is made, it is easy for us to determine, what kind of food he must take, in order to continually renew his body.

      Since the mother's milk is the simplest and most natural food for the child, let us consider it according to its importance. We shall then have a stepping-stone towards the knowledge of the food of adults and its effects. The mother's milk contains all the elements, with which the human body can renew itself; should there be but one of those elements wanting in it, the child would inevitably perish.

      If, for example, milk did not contain calcareous earth, the consequence would be, that the bones of the child would, soon after its birth, neither grow nor increase in number, but they would fast diminish, and the child would die in consequence of this. The attempt was once made to feed animals on articles without calcareous parts, when, strange to behold, they all grew fat, but very weak in their bones, and finally broke down.

      If milk contained no phosphorus, not only would the bones and teeth suffer from the want of it, but even the completion of the child's brain could not properly take place, and the child could not replace the quantity of brain which it emits and loses every moment by breathing.

      If there were no iron in the mother's milk, the child would die from the green-sickness, a malady which, by the way, is dangerous also for grown people, and which is cured by medicines containing plenty of iron.

      If there were no sulphur in it, the child's bile could not develop; the bile, as every one knows, has an important function in the human body.

      These are but accessory elements of the mother's milk, elements which usually are not looked upon as articles of food; for who is aware that he must eat, and actually does eat daily, phosphorus, iron, calcareous earth, and sulphur? And not only these; there are a great many other articles, such as magnesia, chlorine, and fluor, that we eat without being aware of it; moreover, our proper food consists also of three gases: nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen; and of a solid substance called "carbon," which is no less and no more than pure coal.

      All these, my friendly readers, are contained in milk—all these are the elements which in truth constitute the human body. Perhaps some persons believe that there is nothing easier than to procure proper food. It would only be necessary to take a certain quantity of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; a little bit of potassium, natron, calcium, and magnesia; to mix a small piece of iron, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, and fluor, and take this mixture by

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