comes round a feeling of desire is experienced; and, should the accustomed respondence fail to be permitted a sense of discomfort will for a time be induced.

The habit in question should be begun with and enforced by parents and nurses from the earliest period of childhood. Where neglect is allowed to prevail, the bowel, becoming accustomed to over-distension, fails to give the natural warning until accumulation has taken place to an extent sufficient to render the process of defæcation unnaturally difficult. As time wears on, matters gradually become worse and worse, a host of secondary evils are induced, and ultimately the bowels refuse to act without some kind of artificial stimulus being supplied.

In such a case, a habit of regularity may still in the generality of instances be acquired, but determination and perseverance on the part of the individual are needed for the purpose. The attempt should be made and renewed every day at the same hour, whether the inclination exist or not, and likewise whether the result be successful or not.

Thus, in the course of time it will with a fair amount of probability be found, that at the appointed hour the proper desire arrives spontaneously, and leads to the easy accomplishment of that which is required by nature to be performed. The assistance of an occasional enema or of a mild aperient course may be found necessary at first to get a movement of the bowels produced.

ON ARTIFICIAL DIGESTION AS A MEANS OF DISSOLVING MEAT FOR PRODUCING AN ARTICLE OF NOURISHMENT FOR THE INVALID.

In beef tea, broths, and the extracts of meat prepared in the ordinary way, we have physiologically a very imperfect representation of an article of nourishment. Just those very principles of the meat, viz. fibrine and albumen, which constitute its special bloodand tissue-forming elements, and give to it its nutritive value, are left behind as insoluble products. The preparation contains the salines with the various extractive principles, a considerable proportion of which, there are grounds for believing, consist of products of partial decay-materials in course of retrograde metamorphosis, that are of no use as nutritive agents. Taking the extract of meat, for instance, prepared according to Liebig's process, the small quantity of product which he says ought to be obtained (thirty-four pounds of fresh meat yield, he states, only one pound of extract) shows how completely the bulk, or substance of the meat, which constitutes its real nutritive portion, must be rejected. If it be a nutritive article that it is desired to obtain from the meat, it cannot fail to be wrong in principle to adopt a process of preparation

that is attended with the rejection of just that portion which ought to be present.

Having frequently seen how effectually meat can be dissolved by the process of artificial digestion, I have long wondered that it has never been turned to practical account for the purpose, and have felt convinced that some day or other the time must arrive for it to be so.

Mr. Darby, of the firm of Messrs. Darby and Gosden, chemists and practical pharmaceutists, of 140, Leadenhall Street, London, to whom many months ago, during some interviews I was having with him upon the subject of a new kind of food for the diabetic, I communicated the views I have expressed, at once acted upon my suggestion, and has now succeeded in producing a a material of such a character as to give me grounds. for thinking that the attention he has devoted to the matter bids fair to yield a fruitful result.

In the process of procedure adopted the same solvent menstruum that is employed by nature for dissolving meat constitutes that which is made use of. A liquid is prepared containing the organic digestive principle with the appropriate quantity of acid. The hydrochloric is the acid used; and, this being subsequently neutralised with the carbonate of soda, after it has served its purpose, the chloride of sodium or common salt is left in the product. About four hours is the time required, under the most suitable conditions, for solution to be effected. Filtration, it is found, leaves a residue amounting only to about one tenth of the weight of the lean meat that has been taken. This residue is of a greasy nature, and doubtless consists chiefly of fat, which forms a principle that, as is well

known, does not yield, under physiological circumstances, to gastric digestion.

The product obtained when the filtered liquid has been reduced to the consistence of an ordinary extract equals, roughly speaking, about a third of the weight of the meat, in a fresh and lean state, employed. The fibrine and albumen of the meat are both present, and, it is to be observed, present in such a form as to be ready at once for absorption. Having being dissolved in the same kind of way as they are in the living system preparatory to absorption, no action is required to be performed by the stomach. Hence such a product is peculiarly adapted to form a source of nourishment where, from any cause whatever, the digestive powers are in an enfeebled condition.

The effect of the natural process of digestion is not only to dissolve the nitrogenized alimentary principles, but also to transform and render them diffusible. By virtue of the property of diffusibility thus acquired, they can pass, in compliance with the physicial laws of osmosis, and without the exercise of any special vital absorbent action, from the alimentary canal into the circulatory system. That the process under consideration not only dissolves but likewise places the alimentary principles in the same diffusible state, has been reduced to demonstration by the results obtained in the experiments with the product, that have been kindly undertaken for me by Mr. Dickson, an old pupil of Guy's Hospital.

On account of the diffusible state in which the alimentary principles exist, absorption may also be reasonably looked for when the product is introduced into the rectum under the form of an enema.

Some specimens that have been sent to me by Mr. Darby have been taken by patients at Guy's Hospital, and, I am informed by Dr. Steele, the superintendent, have met with approval. Its solution, it must be said, does not make quite so agreeable a liquid to take by itself as beef tea, but it is susceptible of being rendered palatable by flavouring, and may be added to beef tea, broths, arrowroot, or any other kind of food to increase their nutritive properties. One tablespoonful of the product about corresponds to two ounces of fresh lean meat.

It is right to state that whilst the pages of this volume have been going through the press I have been favoured by Dr. Marcet with a copy of the pamphlet he has just published 'On a New Process for preparing Meat for Weak Stomachs.' I here learn that the same idea has been passing through Dr. Marcet's mind as through my own; but, whilst I have been looking to the production of a material for use in a state ready prepared, Dr. Marcet recommends that the process of preparation should be carried on in the patient's house as the article is wanted, just as is ordinarily done in the case of beef tea. For my own part, I feel that such precision is required in the method of procedure as to render it hardly to be expected that the process will be found to be susceptible of being successfully carried out in the hands of the public.

PRINTED BY J. E. ADLARD, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.