" " 5% fat = 10 gr. fat, about.
-----
46 gr.

These 46 grs. constitute barely the 8 per cent. of the total weight of
a ration, averaged in nutritive elements, calculated as follows:--

Albumin 80
Fatty matters 70
Hydrates of carbon 350

This is a very feeble proportion.

If one turns to the calorific point of view, in order to estimate the
share of energy useful to the organism, we arrive at much the same
conclusion. The 46 grs. of nutritive animal elements barely provide
230 thermal units which can be utilised, while the total diet which we
are considering brings a power of disposal of nearly 2,350 thermal
units. It is, even then, barely 10 per cent. of the total energy. The
most convinced flesh eaters, those who buy 400 grs. of meat a day for
their consumption, must learn, willingly or unwillingly, that the
animal element enters only in an infinitesimal part into their real
substance and reparation.

VIII

Beyond this very feeble nutritive help is there, then, in meat,
anything else which makes the use of this article of food necessary,
agreeable or particularly strengthening? It is incontestible that meat
contains stimulating substances, which, as Prof. Armand Gautier has
said, play the part of nerve tonics, and have perhaps a direct action
on the circulation.

These special meat matters are found concentrated in the gravy. Meat
gravy, in fact, beside a feeble proportion of albuminoid matters, or
solubly derived quantities, polypeptides, etc., in notable proportion
of liberated acids, contains a certain quantity of matters, qualified
by the generic name of extractives; a notable quantity of these
extractive matters being creatine and creatinine, as well as
substances of which the fundamental nucleus is the puric grouping.
These purins, by the name which E. Fischer attributes to them, derive
from a special grouping which it would be supposed exists in a
hypothetic body, but which is not known in a state of liberty, purin.
This first term gives rise to a series of bodies in lateral groups, of
which the most interesting are caffeine and theobromine. Amongst these
substances the one which has the maximum of oxidation is no other than
uric acid. Caffeine and theobromine enjoy nervine properties and
energetic vascular actions. These properties minutely studied are
utilised