The Code of Health and Longevity

84 APPENDIX. aftual component parts rauft continue the fame. Nothing in philosophy is farther from the truthu There are expe­ riments to demonflrate, that every part and particle of the firmefl hones, is fucceffively abforbed and dcpofited again *. The folids of the body, whatever their form or texture, are inceflantly renewed. The whole body is a perpetual fecretion, and the bones and their ligaments, the mufcles and their tendons, all the finer and all the more flexible parts of the body, are as continually renew­ ed, and as properly a fecretion, as the faliva that flows from the mouth, or the moifture that bedews the furface. The health of all the parts, and their foundnefs of llruc- ture, depends on this perpetual abforption, and perpetual renovation ; and exercife, by promoting at once ab­ forption and fecretion, promotes life, without hurrying it; renovates all the parts, and preferves them apt and fit for every office. Nutrition belongs not to the ftomach alone, which but prepares the food, and converts it into chyle, but to the veffels by which it is circulated, and appropriated to the nutrition of parts, which of courfe is performed by every petty artery of the body. In nothing ftiould we be more anxioufly careful, than, in laying down rules, which muft affeft the health of thoufandsj and whenever we proceed on do6b"ines, un- fupported by fad, wherever v e divert mankind from thofe amufements a d labours to which nature excites us, we Ihouldproceed with particular caution. We read in books, • This hasbeen afcertained by giving madder to growing animals, efpe-. cially pigs and fowls, among their food. It is found, that the madder tinges the bones, layer after layer, with a red colour; and by the deepnefs of the tinge, demonftrates the fucceffion in which the particles of the bone are abforbed and depofited. This is, I believe, the conclufton which phy- fiologills uave formed.