[Sidenote: Observation, not chemistry, must decide sick diet.]
Chemistry has as yet afforded little insight into the dieting of sick.
All that chemistry can tell us is the amount of "carboniferous" or
"nitrogenous" elements discoverable in different dietetic articles. It
has given us lists of dietetic substances, arranged in the order of
their richness in one or other of these principles; but that is all. In
the great majority of cases, the stomach of the patient is guided by
other principles of selection than merely the amount of carbon or
nitrogen in the diet. No doubt, in this as in other things, nature has
very definite rules for her guidance, but these rules can only be
ascertained by the most careful observation at the bed-side. She there
teaches us that living chemistry, the chemistry of reparation, is
something different from the chemistry of the laboratory. Organic
chemistry is useful, as all knowledge is, when we come face to face with
nature; but it by no means follows that we should learn in the
laboratory any one of the reparative processes going on in disease.
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