At the same time he takes into his lungs,
daily, four or five thousand gallons of air. This amounts to three
thousand pounds of nutriment received through stomach and lungs, and
then expelled from the body, in one year; or about twenty times the
man's own weight.
The change goes on in every minute point of the body, though in some
parts much faster than in others; as set forth in the piquant and
sprightly language of Dr. O. W. Holmes [Footnote: Atlantic Almanac,
1869, p. 40.], who, giving a vivid picture of the constant decay and
renewal of the body, says:
"_Every organized being always lives immersed in a strong solution
of its own elements._"
"Sometimes, as in the case of the air-plant, the solution contains all
its elements; but in higher plants, and in animals generally, some of
the principal ones only. Take our own bodies, and we find the atmosphere
contains the oxygen and the nitrogen, of which we are so largely made
up, as its chief constituents; the hydrogen, also, in its watery vapor;
the carbon, in its carbonic acid. What our air-bath does not furnish
us, we must take in the form of nourishment, supplied through the
digestive organs.
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