Only forty minutes from New Haven by rail,--a distance not greater,
as measured by time separation, than from one side of London to the
other,--at Middletown, Conn., stood also the recently completed
calorimeter of Professors Atwater and Benedict ready for making a
calorimetric trial-balance measurement of metabolism attained and
chemically estimated in the tests at New Haven.
After the Yale demonstration, of which Professor Chittenden’s article,
previously mentioned, treats, the author responded to an invitation
from Professor Atwater and submitted himself to a 32-hour confinement
in the calorimeter for confirmation of the results obtained at New
Haven.
This experience in the calorimeter at Middletown was very significant
and instructive. The author was the first test-subject used in the
newly completed calorimeter. The oxygen-measuring attachment of Dr.
Benedict that completed the apparatus and gave a complete trial
balance of the metabolism of the subject under examination was as
yet untried, but it proved its integrity within the fraction of one
per cent and registered as accurately as necessary for all practical
purposes. So much for the machine; but it measured a result which is
of the greatest importance to the human race. The author had just
demonstrated the possibility of running the human machine on half the
heat, on one-third of the fuel, and with only one-tenth of the waste,
as represented by the waste, or ashes of digestion. Not only was this
done while in pursuit of the ordinary activity of present-day life,
but under stress of 'Varsity-Crew exercise, as reported by Professor
Chittenden and Dr. Anderson. Had this demonstration been made relative
to steam engines or electrical motors, the information would have been
revolutionary in establishing new values for things industrial and
commercial.
Its significance relative to human profitable possibilities is even
more important than if related to steam or electrical power. The
possibility of economy in the human machine gives also a hope of
immunity from the common diseases which now afflict mankind.
The trial of the calorimeter as a measuring machine and the trial
balance of the economic metabolism which the author had attained
by five years of careful attention to the natural requirements of
nutrition were epoch-making events coincidently related, and for them
the author here makes this distinguished claim--not on account of any
accomplishment of himself, but as a promise of great possibilities for
human betterment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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