Читать книгу The Natural Food of Man. Being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts онлайн

52 страница из 58

“Recent researches show us that uric acid arises from the decay of cell nuclei. That portion of uric acid which has its origin in the digestive organs is, like other alloxanic bases, changed into urea—or rather should be. But a diseased liver (or a healthy one which is overworked, owing to an excessive ingestion of food containing cell nuclei, and therefore an excessive amount of uric acid) is unable to transform all the uric acid formed into urea. The quantity of uric acid arising from the normal decay of the tissue is small; in fever, when there is a more rapid decay of cells, the quantity of uric acid and other related alloxanic bodies is considerably increased. The greater the quantity of useless body-material, and the worse (more dysæmic) it is in quality, the greater is the danger of a more rapid decay of cells, and a precipitation of uric acid and related products taking place.... The uric acid, passing through the liver, may perhaps be transformed into urea by a special action of the cells; but the uric acid drawn directly from the digestive canal, and that formed directly from the assimilated food or from the body-material, has to be oxidised, in order to be excreted in the innocuous form of urea. An organism possessed of the faculty of oxidation is protected against a precipitation of uric acid, but in a dysæmic organism, the faculty of transforming uric acid into urea is lessened.... It is a fact well worth considering that the urine of carnivorous animals—e.g. dog and cat—is often quite free from uric acid, while human urine varies in this respect according to the food taken: if vegetable food alone is consumed, the urine will contain, like the urine of herbivorous animals, only traces of uric acid (from ·2 to ·7 grammes in 24 hours); but if a large proportion of flesh-food be taken, the urine will contain 2 grammes or more. Man is the only creature which suffers from the uric acid diathesis; is it not likely that this arises from a wrong choice of food?