and after having taken part in the vital operations. The chemical potential only passes into thermal energy after having passed through a certain intermediary phase of vital energy. This is the normal case, the regular type of alimentary evolution. It may be said in this case that the food has fulfilled the whole of its function, it has served for the vital functional activity before producing heat. It has been biothermogenic.
The irregular or pure thermogenic type.—And now let us conceive of the most simple irregular or aberrant type. Food passes from the initial to the final state without incorporation in the living cells of the organism, and without taking part in the vital functional activity. It remains confined in the blood and the circulating liquids, but it undergoes in the end, however, the same molecular disintegration as before, and sets free the same quantity of heat Its chemical energy changes at once into thermal energy. Food is a pure thermogen. It has fulfilled only one part of its work. It has been of slight vital utility.
Does this ever occur in reality? Are there foods which would be only pure thermogens—that is to say, which would not in reality be incorporated with the living anatomical elements, which would form no part of them either in a state of provisory constituents of the living protoplasm, or in the state of reserve-stuff; which would remain in the internal medium, in the blood and the lymph, and would there undergo their chemical evolution? Or again, if the whole of the food does not escape assimilation, would it be possible for part to escape it? Would it be possible for one part of the same alimentary substance to be
